Rick Beckman

king chess piece standing amid a chessboard full of fallen pieces

KJV 1611 vs. KJV 1769: The KJV-onlyist’s Looming Dilemma

“The only changes made since the 1611 trans­la­tion of the KJV until now have been changes of spelling or print­ing only.” I’ve heard this often, usu­al­ly from well-mean­ing peo­ple who wish to defend the King James Ver­sion’s pedi­gree as a “per­fect” trans­la­tion of the Bible.

That state­ment, how­ev­er, is incor­rect; it is unfit for rep­e­ti­tion by folks who claim an affin­i­ty for the truth. 

One does not have to look far to find (often fun­da­men­tal­ist) min­istries, tracts, or web­sites using “KJV 1611” as if it were a brand, the con­nec­tion to which mean­ing that the min­istry, tract, or web­site agrees with the “per­fect” Bible.1

Imme­di­ate­ly at issue with those instances is that those groups don’t use the 1611 KJV, which would not only be much more dif­fi­cult to reach and preach from, but which does­n’t rep­re­sent the same text as the ver­sion of the KJV which they are using.

KJV Comparison

To illus­trate, here is a list of sig­nif­i­cant changes (i.e., changes which affect the mean­ing of the pas­sage) made to the KJV text since 1611. The 1611 read­ing pre­cedes the 1769.

  • Joshua 3:11 — “Arke of the Couenant, euen the Lord” vs. “ark of the covenant of the Lord”
  • 2 Kings 11:10 — “in the Tem­ple” vs. “in the tem­ple of the LORD”
  • Isa­iah 49:13 — “for God” vs. “for the LORD”
  • Jere­mi­ah 31:14 — “with good­nesse” vs. “with my goodness”
  • Jere­mi­ah 51:30 — “burnt their dwelling places” vs. “burned her dwellingplaces”
  • Ezekiel 6:8 — “that he may” vs. “that ye may”
  • Ezekiel 24:5 — “let him seethe” vs. “let them seethe”
  • Ezekiel 24:7 — “powred it vpon the ground” vs. “poured it not upon the ground”
  • Ezekiel 48:8 — “which they shall” vs. “which ye shall”
  • Daniel 3:15 — “a fierie fur­nace” vs. “a burn­ing fiery furnace”
  • Matthew 14:9 — “the oth­es sake” vs. “the oath’s sake”
  • 1 Corinthi­ans 12:28 — “helpes in gouern­mets” vs. “helps, governments”
  • 1 Corinthi­ans 15:6 — “And that” vs. “After that”
  • 1 John 5:12 — “the Sonne, hath” vs. “the Son of God hath”

If any­one wants to check out the above read­ings for them­selves, both the 1611 KJV and the 1769 KJV are avail­able freely for e‑Sword.2

The KJV Today

Addi­tion­al­ly, even in today there are two ver­sions of the KJV in use: the Oxford and the Cam­bridge edi­tions. Some of the dif­fer­ences in them affect the mean­ing of the text as well. For exam­ple, here are a cou­ple Cam­bridge pas­sages vs. their Oxford counterparts.

  • Jere­mi­ah 34:16 — “whom ye had set” vs. “whom he had set”
  • 2 Tim­o­thy 2:2 — “heard from me” vs. “heard of me”

One can­not help to won­der about KJV-only­ism in light of the above. Was the King James Ver­sion of 1611 per­fect? If yes, why were there such sub­stan­tial changes made to the text between then and 1769? By using a mod­ern edi­tion of the KJV, are not the only­ists admit­ting that the 1611 trans­la­tion was flawed?

And what about the more mod­ern ver­sions? Which one is cor­rect? Why? Upon whose authority?

Which edi­tion of the KJV is perfect?

Between 1611 and 1769, was there a per­fect Eng­lish translation?

Why is the 1769 edi­tion per­fect? What about the more recent Com­fort­able Edi­tion?

If you believe that trans­la­tions can be inspired or that the KJV is advanced rev­e­la­tion of some kind, as some KJV-only­ists do, why did God take over a hun­dred years to con­tin­ue to revise his 1611 work? Does God work on a tri­al and error basis?

I think these are all legit­i­mate questions.

From my expe­ri­ence of being a KJV-only­ist, I always heard that there were no sub­stan­tial dif­fer­ences between the 1611 and the 1769. It is often claimed, as I not­ed above, that only spelling & print­ing errors were fixed. But clear­ly, there were changes to the con­tent as well.

KJV-only­ists should be aware of these claims, espe­cial­ly if they’ve bought into the idea that there were no sub­stan­tial changes.

But I get it, what I’ve writ­ten here is very cur­so­ry, very sur­face-lev­el stuff. Want to go deep­er? Com­ment below, or bring your thoughts to The Fel­low­ship Hall, where your voice matters.

  1. You’re guar­an­teed to find more than a few in this index.
  2. The list itself can be found in Dif­fer­ences between Bible Ver­sions by Gary F. Zeol­la.

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Comments

215 responses to “KJV 1611 vs. KJV 1769: The KJV-onlyist’s Looming Dilemma”

  1. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    so where can I get a copy of God’s word in the eng­lish lan­guage, and which one?

    Reply
    1. Rick Beckman Avatar
      Rick Beckman

      You can get an Eng­lish trans­la­tion at just about every depart­ment store — Wal­mart, Tar­get, K‑mart, etc. all stock Bibles in their books sec­tions, not to men­tion online retail­ers, Chris­t­ian stores, etc.

      As to what ver­sion you should use, I rec­om­mend the ESV, the NKJV, or the NASB as being reli­able trans­la­tions, but if you want some­thing eas­i­er to read, there are a myr­i­ad of options. I pre­fer the more lit­er­al ver­sions, despite the added dif­fi­cul­ty in read­ing that entails.

      Reply
      1. Lynelle Avatar
        Lynelle

        The NJKV has sub­stan­tial doc­tri­nal changes made which ren­der it unreliable.

        Reply
        1. Rick Beckman Avatar
          Rick Beckman

          Doc­tri­nal changes based upon what?

          Reply
          1. Ed Avatar
            Ed

            So what doc­trine did they change? Next, these are sim­ple errors made at the print­ers. So if this man is right, God can not keep His word pure and all are going to H E L L. Because it shows God can not make His Word pure with man, how can He save man and make him, man, pure? He can not. Rick wants us all believe God can do noth­ing includ­ing save us. The Bible is a lie, Rick is a liar and all going to hE l l to burn. Thanks Rick for putting us in H E L L.

            1
            Reply
            1. Rick Beckman Avatar
              Rick Beckman

              If the Bible is a lie, why would any­one go to Hell?

              1
              Reply
              1. Wayne Avatar
                Wayne

                If the Bible is true, why would any­one go to heav­en? Could it be because of Jesus Christ?

                Reply
                1. Rick Beckman Avatar
                  Rick Beckman

                  That’s a big “if,” but yes, if that nov­el is real, then one would have to assume that its rules regard­ing its Heav­en would be reliable.

                  Reply
                  1. Wayne Avatar
                    Wayne

                    Strange that a nov­el can be writ­ten by some Forty authors over about 4000 years and fit togeth­er so well, while explain­ing his­to­ry accu­rate­ly before it occurs.

                    Reply
                    1. Rick Beckman Avatar
                      Rick Beckman

                      Yeah, I know! At least one book isn’t even about God! In one, Satan’s a ser­pent; else­where, a drag­on. Or is he more like a lion? Is God invis­i­ble or not?

                      The books of the Bible fit togeth­er about as well as, well, square pegs and round holes. Hun­dreds of pages long books are writ­ten by apol­o­gists to try to explain away the incon­sis­ten­cies in the Bible (I have a few in my library). It’s real­ly rather entertaining.

                      “Fit togeth­er so well…” That’s rich!

                2. Glynn Avatar
                  Glynn

                  Per­haps you should wor­ship Jesus rather than the Bible. The kjv is an idol to you.

                  Reply
            2. Larry Avatar
              Larry

              Hit that nail on the head!! Accord­ing Rick God can­not pre­serve his Word Perfectly!

              Reply
          2. Chris Avatar
            Chris

            Here is a huge mis­take in the NKJV.
            Luke 6:16 “And Judas the broth­er of James, and Judas Iscar­i­ot, which also was the trai­tor”.- KJV

            “Judas the son of James, and Judas Iscar­i­ot who also became a trai­tor”. — NKJV SOOOOO is Judas the broth­er of James or son of James?
            Actu­al­ly Judas was the broth­er of James
            CE

            There are many more but one is enough

            Reply
            1. Rick Beckman Avatar
              Rick Beckman

              By what stan­dard is the NKJV in error? It agrees with mul­ti­tudes of oth­er ver­sions, includ­ing lit­er­al translations.

              The King James trans­la­tors chose to add “the broth­er” into the phrase “Judas of James,” which is an odd phrase to assume “broth­er­hood.” We don’t typ­i­cal­ly refer to sib­lings in that way; instead, if some­one is “of” some­one else, it tends to denote a parental/offspring relationship.

              If you’re assum­ing the King James Ver­sion is the cor­rect one and then call­ing oth­er ver­sions wrong for not agree­ing with it, you’re not only using cir­cu­lar rea­son­ing (inva­lid­ing your argu­ment), but you’re com­plete­ly miss­ing the point for why mul­ti­ple trans­la­tions have been need­ed — the King James Ver­sion isn’t a per­fect trans­la­tion, in nei­ther its han­dling of the Hebrew and Greek nor in the bias with which it was translated.

              Reply
              1. Craig Bryan Avatar
                Craig Bryan

                I’m 2 Tim­o­thy 3:15, Paul is speak­ing to Tim­o­thy and says that he has known the holy scriptures.
                ” And that from a child thou hast known the holy scrip­tures, which are able to make thee wise unto sal­va­tion through faith which is in Christ Jesus.”
                Tim­o­thy would have been using (most like­ly) a Greek trans­la­tion of the Bible (Old Tes­ta­ment at that time) Jesus would have also been using a Greek trans­la­tion of the Bible and still claimed they were per­fect and pre­served. Matthew 5:18. So if Jesus’ bible was a trans­la­tion and he said it is per­fect our per­fect trans­la­tion (KJV) would still be con­sid­ered per­fect. Just because you won’t accept the fact that it is per­fect does­n’t mean it’s not true. Also to say that the oth­ers are bet­ter are com­plete­ly false. King James ordered the trans­la­tors to use the old words like ye and thou instead of the words they used, no they did not use those words at that time, the NKJV changes them to you which leads to over 40,000 words changed in the Bible. I don’t see any­thing right about that at all. Gala­tians 1:7 also speaks of the fact that peo­ple would be per­vert­ing the Bible. And final­ly about the William Tyn­dall bible and the oth­ers (Includ­ing the Gene­va bible, bish­ops bible, and great bible) there were 7 trans­la­tions into Eng­lish before the KJV. Psalms 12:6 per­fect­ly describes it and even points to the KJV. In say­ing all this I do believe that the KJV is inspired by God and is the best pos­si­ble trans­la­tion. The NIV and NKJV and oth­ers are not bad to have and read. But for study­ing, mem­o­riziyng, and learn­ing more about the Bible the KJV needs to be used. It is per­fect, inerrant, and God said he would pre­serve his word and he has.

                1
                Reply
                1. James Cole Avatar
                  James Cole

                  “[The KJV] is per­fect, inerrant, and God said he would pre­serve his word and he has.” This leaves lit­tle to no pos­si­bil­i­ty for any­one who does not speak Eng­lish to have the “per­fect” Word of God. If the KJV (which is already a trans­la­tion of a trans­la­tion) is per­fect, then we should use it to trans­late the Bible into every oth­er lan­guage. The prob­lem is: lan­guages are dif­fer­ent. It is nigh unto impos­si­ble to express a trans­lat­ed state­ment in exact­ly the same man­ner as the source from which it is translated–whether that’s Eng­lish to Span­ish or Greek to English.

                  Reply
                2. COMALite J Avatar
                  COMALite J

                  You wrote:

                  Tim­o­thy would have been using (most like­ly) a Greek trans­la­tion of the Bible (Old Tes­ta­ment at that time) Jesus would have also been using a Greek trans­la­tion of the Bible and still claimed they were per­fect and pre­served. Matthew 5:18. So if Jesus’ bible was a trans­la­tion and he said it is per­fect our per­fect trans­la­tion (KJV) would still be con­sid­ered perfect.

                  Well, you just demol­ished your whole case, because the KJV Old Tes­ta­ment is not trans­lat­ed from the Greek Sep­tu­agint (LXX) which Tim­o­thy and Jesus used, but from the Hebrew Masoret­ic Text (MT) which was com­piled and tran­scribed cen­turies lat­er by the Masorete rab­bis dur­ing the Mid­dle Ages. If the Greek ver­sion is the per­fect source, but the KJV uses anoth­er source, then by def­i­n­i­tion it isn’t per­fect, now, is it?

                  But we don’t have to spec­u­late. Jesus’s quot­ing of sev­er­al Old Tes­ta­ment scrip­tures fol­lows the LXX, not the MT. And the MT itself has demon­stra­ble errors, such as Psalm 145 being a per­fect Hebrew acros­tic with each verse begin­ning with a dif­fer­ent let­ter of the Hebrew alpha­bet in order — or, rather, would be a per­fect acros­tic except, oh dar­nit, it’s miss­ing the line for the let­ter Nun (“נ” in reg­u­lar form, “ן” in sofit or final form used only at the ends of words)!

                  Anoth­er exam­ple demon­strat­ing that the Masorete got some things wrong in the MT is the age of King Ahazi­ah when he ascend­ed to the throne of the South­ern King­dom of Judah as recount­ed in II Kings 8 and I Chron­i­cles 22, fol­low­ing the hor­rif­ic death (arguably the most hor­rif­ic death in the entire Bible — far and away worse even than the Cru­ci­fix­ion of Christ! You see, the Lᴏʀᴅ lit­er­al­ly hat­ed Jehoram’s guts, so He sent said guts out­side of Dad­dy King Jehoram’s body the hard way over a two-year peri­od!) of his father King Jeho­ram as recount­ed in I Chron­i­cles 21.

                  II Kings 8:26 in every trans­la­tion says that Ahazi­ah was 22 (often writ­ten out as “twen­ty-two,” or “two and twen­ty years old” in the KJV). But I Chron­i­cles 22:2 in trans­la­tions based on the MT (includ­ing the KJV) say that he was 42 (“Forty and two” in the KJV)! Yet those based on the LXX agree with all ver­sions of II Kings 8:26 that he was 22! In those trans­la­tions but not the KJV and oth­er MT-based trans­la­tions, his age is the same in both vers­es!

                  I’ve seen a lot of lame attempts by KJV Only­ists to try to explain this away, such as claim­ing that there was more than one King Jeho­ram of Judah who had a son named Ahazi­ah (there wasn’t — Matthew would lat­er list the Kings of Judah as part of the geneal­o­gy of Joseph to show that Jesus was the right­ful King of the Jews, and Matthew made a big deal about there being four­teen gen­er­a­tions between major events from Abra­ham to David, David to the Exile, and the Exile to Jesus, so he couldn’t’ve skipped any, and yet he lists Jeho­ram and Ahazi­ah [Greek­i­fied as “Joram” and “Oza­ias” respec­tive­ly in the KJV of Matthew 1:8–9) only once each, and as father and son! If there were more than one pair, then that alone makes the Gospel Accord­ing to Matthew a lie! (It is, actu­al­ly, but more on that some oth­er time.)

                  Oth­ers have tried to claim that Dad­dy King Jeho­ram gave his son a “prac­tice reign” twen­ty years before he died. Prob­lem is, no oth­er king ever did such a thing. There was no tra­di­tion of Kings of Israel or Judah doing that. And besides, as both II Kings and I Chron­i­cles (21:1) make clear, Ahazi­ah was the youngest son, and only ascend­ed to the throne because the Ara­bi­ans had cap­tured or killed (the account dif­fer on which) all of his old­er broth­ers. So there was no way Jeho­ram (whom the Lᴏʀᴅ hat­ed more than arguably any­one else in the Bible, remem­ber?) could’ve known in advance that that would hap­pen. If he were to give one of his sons a “prac­tice reign,” wouldn’t it be the eldest son, the first­bornm, the Marked or Crown Prince!? There were broth­ers between them also, since the plur­al is used in I Chron­i­cles 22:1. So why give such a reign to his youngest son?

                  But we don’t have to spec­u­late either. It’s flat-out impos­si­ble for Jeho­ram to have giv­en any of his sons a “prac­tice reign” twen­ty years pri­or to his death because, as is clear­ly stat­ed in both books (twice in II Chron­i­cles 21), Jeho­ram only reigned for eight<?em> years!

                  And now we get to the big prob­lem with the KJV being right about this: Dad­dy King Jeho­ram was him­self only forty years old when he died! Thir­ty-and-two (32) was he when he began to reign, and he reigned eight years in Jerusalem — this is stat­ed repeat­ed­ly! Do the math! 32 + 8 = 40. So how could Ahazi­ah be 42!? Wouldn’t that mean that this king whom the Lᴏʀᴅ hat­ed above all the rest of mankind before or since was some­how giv­en the sin­gle most astound­ing mir­a­cle in the entire Bible!?<?em> For the KJV of I Chron­i­cles 22:2 to be right, Jehoram’s youngest son would have to be two years old­er than him!! Now that’s a neat trick, even for the Bible!

                  Reply
                  1. Aaron Parker Avatar
                    Aaron Parker

                    Why would any­one lis­ten to these God haters?

                    Reply
                    1. COMALite J Avatar
                      COMALite J

                      Who are you refer­ring to as a God hater?

                  2. Larry Avatar
                    Larry

                    So you also believe God did not pre­serve his Word perfectly??

                    Reply
                3. Tony Avatar
                  Tony

                  Craig: pity you can’t use the KJV to prove your asser­tions. As much you and those w/same beliefs, want this pas­sage to claim preser­va­tion of God’s word, You CAN’T!! Below you’ll see how You CAN’T cor­rupt God’s word to make it say what it does not. Or is it only KJVOs can mis­use and mis­ap­ply to preach man- made doc­trine while vio­lat­ing their own “can’t add, change, or take away” dog­ma. Psalms 12 specif­i­cal­ly V5‑7 is about His peo­ple, not His word or words:
                  1. tak­en out of con­text by ommit­ting V5
                  2. the V5 nouns are masculine
                  3. the V6 nouns are feminine.
                  4. the V7 pro­nouns are masculine
                  5. rel­e­vant because ancient Hebrew has gen­der rules like Ital­ian, Span­ish, a few oth­er Euro­pean lan­guages there­fore the gen­ders MUST agree. Thus the “them” in V7 refers to the “peo­ple” in V5

                  Reply
              2. Ronald Broadstone Avatar
                Ronald Broadstone

                Actu­al­ly there is mer­it per­tain­ing to the argu­ment of KJV trans­la­tion com­pared to oth­er trans­la­tions. I will give a few exam­ples of the KJV against the NIV. (which most all trans­la­tions after the NIV con­tain the same omis­sions as well)

                There are many but I will just spear-head with the main argu­ment, that after the KJV, start­ing with the NIV, the trans­la­tions began to omit or change text-proof refer­ring to Jesus Christ being God in the flesh, one in the same as part of the Holy Trin­i­ty, Infi­nite since the begin­ning, rather than being a sep­a­rate being. (Not God Him­self) Which in turn, obvi­ous­ly, makes it near­ly impos­si­ble to defend the stance that Jesus Christ IS God, our Cre­ator, and ulti­mate­ly our Savior!

                Here are a few of many examples:

                Eph­esians 3:9
                KJ – “And to make all men see what is the fel­low­ship of the mys­tery, which from the begin­ning of the world hath been hid in God, who cre­at­ed all things by Jesus Christ.”

                NIV – “and to make plain to every­one the admin­is­tra­tion of this mys­tery, which for ages past was kept hid­den in God, who cre­at­ed all things.”

                (How can you claim Jesus Christ and the Cre­ator are seper­ate? I know, by leav­ing out the verse of Jesus Christ cre­at­ing all things…)

                Rev­e­la­tion 1:11
                KJ – “Say­ing, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last: and, What thou seest, write in a book, and send it unto the sev­en churches.“

                NIV – “which said: Write on a scroll what you see and send it to the sev­en churches“

                (The bla­tant omis­sion here should be obvious.)

                1 John 5:7–8
                KJ – “ For there are three that bear record in heav­en, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. And there are three that bear wit­ness in earth, the spir­it, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.”

                NIV- “For there are three that tes­ti­fy: the Spir­it, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement.“

                (Again, obvi­ous.)

                1 Tim­o­thy 3:16
                KJ- “And with­out con­tro­ver­sy great is the mys­tery of god­li­ness: GOD was man­i­fest in the flesh, jus­ti­fied in the Spir­it, seen of angels, preached unto the Gen­tiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory“

                NIV – “Beyond all ques­tion, the mys­tery of god­li­ness is great: HE appeared in a body, was vin­di­cat­ed by the Spir­it, was seen by angels, was preached among the nations, was believed on in the world, was tak­en up in glory“

                (Replac­ing “God” with “He” forces the read­er to ALLUDE to He mean­ing God. Why do this when leav­ing the trans­la­tion as God would make no room for debate?)

                1 John 3:16
                KJ – “Here­by per­ceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. “

                NIV – “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.”

                (Same rea­son­ing of the last exam­ple, why change it from God giv­ing his life for us, to Jesus Christ giv­ing his life for us, unless again you want­ed to leave it open to debate whether or not he was God Him­self or just a man name jesus christ?)

                Romans 14:10
                KJ – “But why dost thou judge thy broth­er? or why dost thou set at nought thy broth­er? for we shall all stand before the judg­ment seat of Christ.“

                NIV – “You, then, why do you judge your broth­er? Or why do you look down on your broth­er? For we will all stand before God’s judg­ment seat.”

                (I hope you are begin­ning to see a pat­tern here…)

                Now that should be plen­ty of rea­son­ing for the argu­ment, but to add even more valid­i­ty, here are a few more trans­la­tion dif­fer­ences that leave out almost ENTIRE vers­es! Why? My own per­son­al opin­ion is that it was done to take away some of the Pow­er of the very Word itself!

                Acts 8:37
                KJ – “And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.”

                NIV –

                (An ENTIRE verse, just left out! A verse about the Pow­er of Faith in Jesus Christ, how con­ve­nient for the enemy!)

                Matthew 5:44
                KJ – “But I say unto you, Love your ene­mies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despite­ful­ly use you, and per­se­cute you;”

                NIV – “But I tell you: Love your ene­mies and pray for those who per­se­cute you,”

                (The only point, in my mind, to leave out spe­cif­ic details could only be to weak­en what was said, or per­haps just pure lazi­ness of the translators…but I doubt the latter.)

                Matthew 9:13
                KJ – “But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mer­cy, and not sac­ri­fice: for I am not come to call the right­eous, but sin­ners to repentance.”

                NIV – “But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mer­cy, not sac­ri­fice.’ For I have not come to call the right­eous, but sinners.”

                (While we’re at it, let’s leave out repen­tance too, why not.)

                Matthew 20:16
                KJ – “So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen. “

                NIV – “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

                (Don’t want to hurt the feel­ings of the many!)

                Matthew 27:35
                KJ – “And they cru­ci­fied him, and part­ed his gar­ments, cast­ing lots: that it might be ful­filled which was spo­ken by the prophet, They part­ed my gar­ments among them, and upon my ves­ture did they cast lots.”

                NIV – “When they had cru­ci­fied him, they divid­ed up his clothes by cast­ing lots.”

                (Bye-bye to ful­fill­ing Old Tes­ta­ment prophecy…minor details that you don’t need to know.)

                Mark 6:11
                KJ – “And whoso­ev­er shall not receive you, nor hear you, when ye depart thence, shake off the dust under your feet for a tes­ti­mo­ny against them. Ver­i­ly I say unto you, It shall be more tol­er­a­ble for Sodom and Gom­or­rha in the day of judg­ment, than for that city.”

                NIV – “And if any place will not wel­come you or lis­ten to you, shake the dust off your feet when you leave, as a tes­ti­mo­ny against them.”

                (No judge­ment? Then deny away, no harm no foul.)

                Mark 10:24
                KJ – “And the dis­ci­ples were aston­ished at his words. But Jesus answereth again, and saith unto them, Chil­dren, how hard is it for them that trust in rich­es to enter into the king­dom of God!”

                NIV – “The dis­ci­ples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said again, “Chil­dren, how hard it is to enter the king­dom of God!”

                (Of course the rich don’t want to hear that so let’s just leave it out for this generation.)

                Luke 4:4
                KJ – “And Jesus answered him, say­ing, It is writ­ten, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God. “

                NIV – “Jesus answered, “It is writ­ten: ‘Man does not live on bread alone.”

                (Jesus must have for­got­ten the rest of the scrip­ture ref­er­ence accord­ing to these translators!)

                Luke 4:8
                KJ – “And Jesus answered and said unto him, Get thee behind me, Satan: for it is writ­ten, Thou shalt wor­ship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.”

                NIV – “Jesus answered, “It is writ­ten: ‘Wor­ship the Lord your God and serve him only.’”

                (Drop the part about satan! *phew*…that was a close one…almost revealed our “pos­si­ble” motives behind all this dis­tor­tion of Gods Word…)

                The list of dis­tor­tions and weak­en­ing of vers­es goes on and on. For the sake of space I’ll stop there…with dis­tor­tions. So here are a few vers­es the trans­la­tors decid­ed to erase from mem­o­ry completely.

                Matthew 18:11 KJ – “For the Son of man is come to save that which was lost.”

                Acts 8:37 KJ – “And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.” 

                Matthew 23:14 KJ – “Woe unto you, scribes and Phar­isees, hyp­ocrites! for ye devour wid­ows’ hous­es, and for a pre­tence make long prayer: there­fore ye shall receive the greater damnation.”

                Mark 9:44 KJ – “Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched”

                Mark 11:26 KJ – “But if ye do not for­give, nei­ther will your Father which is in heav­en for­give your trespasses.”

                So final­ly you’re left ask­ing, WHY on earth dis­tort and omit all of this infor­ma­tion from scrip­ture!? Well, allow the decep­tion of the trans­la­tors them­selves to come to your own conclusion.

                The pub­lish­ers decep­tion used to pro­mote the NIV

                Decep­tion #1 – The NIV “just” updates the “archa­ic” words and makes it “eas­i­er to under­stand”. Noth­ing is “real­ly changed.

                Truth: The NIV removes some vers­es that con­firm the deity of Jesus Christ.

                Decep­tion #2 – The NIV is eas­i­er to read and understand.

                Truth: Accord­ing to a Flesch-Kin­caid Grade Lev­el research study, The King James Bible is by far the easiest!

                Decep­tion #3 – Old­er and more reli­able man­u­scripts have been dis­cov­ered since the King James Bible.

                Truth: Dr. Sam Gipp writes, “The fact is, that the King James trans­la­tors had ALL OF THE READINGS avail­able to them that mod­ern crit­ics have avail­able to them today.” (The Answer Book, Gipp, p.110)

                Decep­tion #4 – The NIV is more accurate.

                Truth: The KJB is a lit­er­al word for word trans­la­tion. When the trans­la­tors had to add words for sen­tence struc­ture they are in italics.

                The NIV uses “dynam­ic equiv­a­lence”. Rather than a word for word trans­la­tion, they add, change and sub­tract to make the verse say what they “thought” it should! The Pref­ace to the NIV even says, “…they have striv­en for more than a word-for-word translation…”

                Why would pub­lish­ers print so many dif­fer­ent Bible versions?

                The King James Bible is the ONLY Bible that is not OWNED by men!

                That’s right! The King James Bible has no Copy­right own­er­ship and it can be pub­lished by any­one, any­time, with no need to ask for permission!

                So if you’re a pub­lish­er and you want to have exclu­sive copy­rights to max­i­mize your prof­its, you have to pro­duce new ver­sions of the Bible, such as the NIV.

                Lucifer seeks to deceive Chris­tians and non-believ­ers, and the mod­ern ver­sions of the Bible only serve to con­fuse people.

                By hav­ing dif­fer­ent ver­sions that con­flict with one anoth­er, peo­ple don’t under­stand why they should believe that the Bible is the Word of God and not the words of men.

                And when they remove the deity of Jesus, his redeem­ing blood sac­ri­fice and the Holy Trin­i­ty, they remove Chris­tians abil­i­ty to prove that these things are true.

                REFERENCES: http://www.christianitybeliefs.com

                Reply
                1. COMALite J Avatar
                  COMALite J

                  Quoth Ronald Broad­stone:

                  Decep­tion #3 — Old­er and more reli­able man­u­scripts have been dis­cov­ered since the King James Bible.

                  Truth: Dr. Sam Gipp writes, “The fact is, that the King James trans­la­tors had ALL OF THE READINGS avail­able to them that mod­ern crit­ics have avail­able to them today.” (The Answer Book, Gipp, p. 110)

                  I can dis­prove Dr. Sam Gipp’s sil­ly lit­tle asser­tion in three words: “Dead Sea Scrolls.”

                  I’ll rip apart more of your screed lat­er. Bed­time now.

                  Reply
                2. Larry Avatar
                  Larry

                  It is obvi­ous the mod­ern Bibles have been cor­rupt­ed and was done on pur­pose from men like Wescott & Hort!!!

                  Reply
        2. Tony Avatar
          Tony

          Chap­ters and verses?
          What is your ref­er­ence, your yard­stick that you mea­sure those “doc­tri­nal changes?”

          Reply
        3. Grant M Avatar
          Grant M

          “Doc­tri­nal changes to the NKjV? Doc­trine comes from hermeneu­tics, not the translation.

          Reply
      2. eric Avatar
        eric

        1611 repli­ca from oxford… quater­cente­nary edi­tion. No mis­takes… only numerol­o­gy games on wrong words. How­ev­er it is obvi­ous­ly freema­son inspired, and not the oth­er way around being their book of inspi­ra­tion. The images speak even with the artist long since dead.

        Reply
        1. richard johnson Avatar
          richard johnson

          the prob­lem with say­ing its free mason­ry inspired is that freema­son­ry as we know it today did not even exist for anoth­er 100 years or so after the cre­ation of the AV

          Reply
      3. Scott Avatar
        Scott

        There are dif­fer­ent schools of thought with­in the KJV camp. One thing all KJV advo­cates acknowl­edge is that the orig­i­nal 1611 edi­tion had some typo­graph­i­cal errors which were cor­rect­ed in lat­er edi­tions. The “changes” you cit­ed in your arti­cle are indeed very minor and were most­ly the result of typo­graph­i­cal errors. Sub­se­quent edi­tions also reflect­ed changes in spelling, fonts, etc. No note­wor­thy tex­tu­al changes took place after the orig­i­nal edi­tion except cor­rect­ing the typos and updat­ing spellings. It’s not like mod­ern Bible ver­sions that com­plete­ly revise the text with each new edi­tion to the point that it seems like a whole new ver­sion from the pre­vi­ous edi­tion. The KJV edi­tions did­n’t do that. For all prac­ti­cal pur­pos­es, the Oxford edi­tion I use today is tex­tu­al­ly iden­ti­cal to the orig­i­nal 1611.

        Reply
        1. Robert van der vos Avatar
          Robert van der vos

          the orig­i­nal KJV of Tyn­dale spells son as sonne but since 1769 son has been spelt as son

          Reply
          1. Rick Beckman Avatar
            Rick Beckman

            Tyn­dale died near­ly a decade before the KJV was a thing.

            Reply
      4. Greg Norris Avatar
        Greg Norris

        Are you a Jew? You are lying!!! The Vat­a­canus, Alexan­dri­an, and Sina­iati­cus texts are bogus and they don’t even agree with each oth­er. It is real­ly sim­ple. There is the major­i­ty text which is reli­able and agrees, and then there is the crit­i­cal minor­i­ty texts which all mod­ern bibles have switched to includ­ing the ESV and the NASB 1995. The NIV should be renamed the near­ly inspired ver­sion. The NKJV is also based off the minor­i­ty crit­i­cal texts. Stay away from West­cott and Hort garbage trans­la­tions which have infect­ed vir­tu­al­ly all mod­ern trans­la­tions. Stay away from CI Scofield Dis­pen­sa­tion­al notes that is the biggest hoax ever pulled over the eys of the church EVER!!! Amil­len­ni­al Ortho­dox Preter­ist is the true bib­li­cal escha­tol­ogy. Don’t lis­ten to this deceiv­er. He is either igno­rant or a straight up liar.

        Reply
    2. William Avatar
      William

      The best and only true trans­la­tion is the Autho­rized King James Ver­sion so go get you one of those. :) God Bless

      Reply
      1. SRC Avatar
        SRC

        Tru­ly the con­tro­ver­sy is can God pre­serve his Word though out the ages. If we don’t believe this then God will be unable to pre­serve our sal­va­tion. “In the begin­ning was the Word…”. PRIDE, PRIDE, PRIDE brought Satan down and caused him to twist God’s words and caused Eve to twist his Word a lit­tle more. “Lean not unto our own under­stand­ing.…”. To all who read this- Satan is the author of confusion!

        Reply
        1. COMALite J Avatar
          COMALite J

          Fun­ny thing about that sto­ry, though: the Ser­pent (which the Bible doesn’t actu­al­ly iden­ti­fy as Satan until well into Rev­e­la­tion, the very last book [“… the Drag­on, that old ser­pent … the Dev­il … Satan”]) told the truth to Eve (Gen­e­sis 3:5) by God’s own admis­sion! (Gen­e­sis 3:25)

          Reply
          1. Mark Avatar
            Mark

            Real­ly? He told the truth…“Ye shall not sure­ly die” Gen. 3:4 Is not this a lie???

            Reply
            1. COMALite J Avatar
              COMALite J

              The Lᴏʀᴅ told Adam & Eve that they would die the same day that they ate of the Fruit of the Tree of Knowl­edge of Good and Evil, but that wasn’t what I was refer­ring to.

              The Ser­pent also said (imme­di­ate­ly after the part you quot­ed), “For God doth know that in the day ye eat there­of, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, know­ing good and evil.” (3:5)

              As the Lᴏʀᴅ God was send­ing them out of the Gar­den, He said (v. 22): “Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil:”

              Right there, the Lᴏʀᴅ God Him­self out­right admits that, at least on that point, the Ser­pent told the truth!

              (Oh, and just who is this “us” that the Lᴏʀᴅ God is only one of, anyway?)

              Also note that the rea­son in His words that He actu­al­ly kicked them out of the Gar­den wasn’t just for pun­ish­ment, but to keep them from eat­ing of the Tree of Life and liv­ing for­ev­er! Now why would He want to keep them from that?

              For that mat­ter, why did He cre­ate those Trees in the first place if He didn’t want them to par­take of them? Either of them? Why put them not only in the Gar­den, but in the midst (mid­dle, cen­ter) of the Gar­den? No mat­ter whether the Gar­den was square or round or rec­tan­gu­lar or some oth­er shape, by def­i­n­i­tion the cen­ter is the one spot that they can’t get as far away from as they could any oth­er spot in the entire Gar­den with­out leav­ing the Gar­den entire­ly! Why put them there!?

              Reply
              1. Hollie Avatar
                Hollie

                Pos­si­bly;
                “Die” as in los­ing inno­cence, intro­duc­ing them­selves to wicked ways.
                “Us” as in immor­tals; now know­ing evil since depriv­ing them­selves of purity.
                Being cast out from their safe land and would “sure­ly die” after disobeying.
                Temp­ta­tion doomed them when they no longer believed the cre­ators words but some­one else — just as it is warned today.

                Reply
      2. Latoya Gauthier Avatar
        Latoya Gauthier

        It’s so sad how we GODs fam­i­ly take things so small in the text and argue . And make a big issue ..The point is Jesus was born of a vir­gin ..died on the cross for our sins and was Resurrected.…and liv­ing with in he’s peo­ple today .…..when the Bible your read­ing leave this out …there is a prob­lem .…it don’t mat­ter if each Bible use dif­fer­ent words to real­ly mean the same thing… this is the work of the dev­il to cause con­fu­sion to feed in uncer­tain­ties that we deal with ..in these try­ing times . Stay prAyed up.…grounded in faith..stop wast­ing time in confusion…trust inGODs promis­es and abilities …

        Reply
    3. Wayne Avatar
      Wayne

      Dear freind,
      Why would you go to an athe­ist to find out which Bible is the right one? I just got on this web­site a few days ago only to find out that this is not the place to be encour­aged in the Lord. Sit­ting in the coun­sel of the ungod­ly is not a Chris­tian’s prerogative.

      Reply
      1. Rick Beckman Avatar
        Rick Beckman

        When I wrote the above post, I was­n’t an athe­ist. Besides, I could ask the same thing reversed: Why would any­one go to a Chris­t­ian to learn about the Bible? They’re obvi­ous­ly biased and unable to make ratio­nal assess­ments of the sub­ject matter.

        Reply
        1. Wayne Avatar
          Wayne

          They only seem to be biased to you because of your unbelief.

          Reply
          1. Rick Beckman Avatar
            Rick Beckman

            And because I under­stand what the word “bias” means. I admit that my take on the Bible is biased as well; how­ev­er, I attempt to frame my under­stand­ing of it in ratio­nal terms based on log­ic and rea­son and nev­er on the “you just got­ta believe” non­sense applied to it by Christians.

            Reply
            1. Wayne Avatar
              Wayne

              Rick, you don’t have to take it on the “you just got­ta believe” basis. True faith is not a leap in the dark. It is based on absolute truth. One does­n’t need to under­stand every jot and tit­tle, but by search­ing, the whole with its per­ti­nent details fall into place. Then over time some of the unknowns become clear. Don’t give up!

              Reply
              1. Rick Beckman Avatar
                Rick Beckman

                Yes, yes it is. If you have evi­dence for some­thing, you don’t need faith.

                Reply
                1. Wayne Avatar
                  Wayne

                  I’d say that the res­ur­rec­tion is fac­tu­al proof with over 500 eye wit­ness­es to His post res­ur­rec­tion appear­ances. Then there is ful­filled prophecy.

                  Reply
                  1. COMALite J Avatar
                    COMALite J

                    I’d say that the res­ur­rec­tion is fac­tu­al proof with over 500 eye wit­ness­es to His post res­ur­rec­tion appearances. 

                    Real­ly? Who are these 500 wit­ness­es? What are their names? Where can we read their own accounts of this?

                    Oh, wait, you’re talk­ing about some guy named “Saul of Tar­sus” who couldn’t even keep his own ori­gin sto­ry straight who claimed that “above five hun­dred brethren” saw the res­ur­rect­ed Christ (I Corinthi­ans 15, key verse 6)?

                    Fun­ny thing: not a sin­gle one of the Gospel accounts (you know, the books writ­ten express­ly to record the life and min­istry and cru­ci­fix­ion and res­ur­rec­tion and after­math there­of of Jesus Christ, specif­i­cal­ly to pro­vide evi­dence that He tru­ly was the promised Mes­si­ah? Yeah. Them.) so much as hint of such a thing hap­pen­ing — not even the one writ­ten by “Paul”’s bestest bud­dy and per­son­al physi­cian Luke (the guy who also wrote The Acts of the Apos­tles which is all about what hap­pened after Jesus ascend­ed and how the Apos­tles start­ed spread­ing the Gospel but failed at it so along comes Paul née Saul of Tar­sus to show them how to do it right)!

                    Hey, I could claim that Her­ak­les aka Her­cules came back to Earth, and that “above five thou­sand men” saw him. But unless I could cough up the names of these alleged wit­ness­es, and unless at least some of them wrote their own accounts of this, it’d mean only that I had noth­ing to show for my claims than my own blus­ter. You know, like Paul did.

                    Oh, and the oth­er events Paul men­tions there are flat­ly con­tra­dict­ed by the four Gospels. He says that the res­ur­rect­ed Lord was first seen by Cephas (“Peter”) and all of the twelve (verse 5), then this mys­te­ri­ous appear­ance to “above 500 brethren at once” which no oth­er Bible writer nor even Pauline epis­tle seems to know any­thing about (v. 6), then to “James and the oth­er apos­tles” (v. 7), and “last of all” by Saul him­self (v. 8ff).

                    Except that not a sin­gle one of the Gospel accounts backs that up, even with­out the verse 6 part. The verse 7 part could refer to the appear­ance in the upper room where doubt­ing Thomas was final­ly present and saw and felt Jesus’s res­ur­rect­ed but still-wound­ed hands and feet and side and where He ate fish and hon­ey­comb, but all four Gospel accounts say that the first peo­ple to see Him after His res­ur­rec­tion was a group of women led by Mary Mag­da­lene (with var­i­ous com­pan­ions which dif­fers from Gospel to Gospel). Paul seems to be total­ly unaware of this. In fact, in all of his Epis­tles, Paul nev­er even so much as men­tions Mary Mag­da­lene (he does allude to a “Mary” in Romans 16:6, but only in the con­text of greet­ing sev­er­al lead­ing women in the Church at Rome, who’d be very unlike­ly to be Mary Mag­da­lene nor Mary the moth­er of Jesus and adopt­ed moth­er of John, nor Mary the moth­er of John Mark that Peter abode with in Acts 12).

                    The verse 5 part is flat­ly impos­si­ble since it says that Jesus was seen by Cephas then all of the twelve. Prob­lem is, there wasn’t twelve Apos­tles at the time. Remem­ber, Judas Iscar­i­ot had betrayed Him four days pre­vi­ous­ly, and had gone and offed him­self in his shame over that? And his replace­ment Matthias wouldn’t be appoint­ed by cast­ing forth lots until after Jesus ascend­ed into Heav­en forty days lat­er! So just who are these twelve, all of whom saw Him before these Name­less 500? “All of” means “every last one of,” with­out a sin­gle exception.

                    Paul in fact doesn’t real­ly seem to know a whole lot about the Jesus of the four Gospels (not even the one his bud­dy Luke wrote). For instance, what was Jesus most com­mon­ly known as by the gen­er­al pub­lic? “Jesus of Nazareth,” right? And what did He call Him­self more than any oth­er title? “The Son of Man,” right? Paul doesn’t seem to know about either name. Not once in any of his Epis­tles does he use either, nor does he even men­tion Nazareth as a city! (Nor Beth­le­hem, for that mat­ter, but that’s anoth­er sub­ject in itself.) Only once in all of his Epis­tles does he actu­al­ly quote Jesus, and that only briefly to do with the Last Sup­per. He flat­ly con­tra­dicts Jesus’s teach­ings on numer­ous points, includ­ing the require­ments for sal­va­tion itself (Paul says by grace alone with works hav­ing no part, Jesus says works are what deter­mines who is and who is not saved in numer­ous places and in no uncer­tain terms [Matthew 25:31–46 being the most impor­tant but by no means the only one]).

                    You also men­tioned “ful­filled prophe­cy.” Boy howdy can I have a field day with that! Those Mes­sian­ic prophe­cies don’t hold up any­where near as well as you think, but I don’t have time to go into it right now. Later.

                    Reply
                2. James Cole Avatar
                  James Cole

                  The world’s def­i­n­i­tion of faith is dif­fer­ent than the Bible’s.
                  The world’s faith: essen­tial­ly a blind hope–with no assur­ance that the object of the faith is actu­al­ly real or will come into fruition.
                  The Bible’s faith: (from Hebrews 11:1) That which proves (or brings sub­stance to) the things we can­not see; I believe the Holy Spir­it is the only enti­ty that can grant such a faith.
                  I believe the only

                  Reply
        2. Nick Spitzley Avatar
          Nick Spitzley

          So you began to ques­tion the Bible and now you dont believe it at all. This proves the point of KJV read­ers for sure.

          Reply
          1. Rick Beckman Avatar
            Rick Beckman

            I still use the King James Ver­sion often; the rea­son I walked away has noth­ing to do with trans­la­tion­al issues. The King James Ver­sion is actu­al­ly more on point with why I walked away from the faith, if mem­o­ry serves. If some of the more dynam­ic trans­la­tions were to be tak­en seri­ous­ly, I may have been able to save my faith. But the more exact trans­la­tions were faith-killing. So the King James Ver­sion Only­ists can use me as an exam­ple all they want; as typ­i­cal, they won’t know what they are talk­ing about.

            Reply
            1. Craig Bryan Avatar
              Craig Bryan

              Just say­ing you said the words “I might have been able to save my faith” you haven’t includ­ed Jesus in any of this. If you would have been saved in the first place then you would­n’t need to save your faith. You prob­a­bly had no faith to begin with.

              Reply
          2. James Cole Avatar
            James Cole

            You won’t find in the Bible any doc­trine that states if a per­son reads an alter­nate trans­la­tion of the Bible, they will become an athe­ist. One is an athe­ist by his choice alone. Can one be influ­enced by the sto­ry of Christ to be an athe­ist? Even the dev­il under­stands that a house divid­ed against itself can­not stand.

            Reply
            1. Rick Beckman Avatar
              Rick Beckman

              For what it’s worth, I became an unbe­liev­er by read­ing the Bible. Deuteron­o­my 22 killed my faith, which means the oth­er pas­sage about the law of God being per­fect, con­vert­ing the soul, is a lie, not only because the law decon­vert­ed me but also because souls don’t exist.

              Reply
          3. Tony Avatar
            Tony

            The “Bible,” unfor­tu­nate­ly, is dif­fer­ent to dif­fer­ent peo­ple. For­tu­nate­ly, I know God cares far more that I have Jesus in my heart, than which Bible is in my hand — a small, but incred­i­bly detail some miss.

            Reply
        3. Blessed Avatar
          Blessed

          Romans 1. You need to study this and repent. No one is an “athe­ist”. God reveals him­self to all men there­fore all men become guilty before Him and there­fore He will be a just God when He casts you into Hell and He says He will laugh at your calami­ty. He will give you over to your repro­bate mind and there will be no hope for your soul if you do not repent. Please my friend, beg God now for for­give­ness and the gift of repen­tance that only He can give you before He says it’s too late.

          Reply
          1. Rick Beckman Avatar
            Rick Beckman

            Let me know how I can arrange a meet­ing with God so that I can ask him. I’m avail­able most Sun­days through Wednesdays.

            Reply
            1. Gurjeet Avatar
              Gurjeet

              If you would like to meet god, shoot your self in the head , hang your self , slit your throat, or step in front of a train. These are a few fast ways of arrang­ing the meet­ing you desire. You could also just live out the rest of your life and just die nat­u­ral­ly, but either way you will have the coun­cil you desire, and in either way you die you will still go straight to hell after your chat with the LORD. The only way out of this ever­last­ing tor­ment is if you go back to God and ask for for­give­ness. Clear your self with the Blood of Jesus, so yours sins may be washed away . Please stop respond­ing to oth­ers with a mock­ing tone, espe­cial­ly when the mat­ter involves God. I am not reply­ing to you in jok­ing man­ner. Only a tru­ly stu­pid man will mock god with out know­ing 100% that God does not exist. What you are doing is play­ing a very dan­ger­ous game of Russ­ian roulette with your life (soul) , and not know­ing for sure wether there is a bul­let in the gun or not. It’s bet­ter to be good (holy), believe (in jesus), and die and there be noth­ing (no god), than it is to be bad (sin­ful), not belive, die, and find out that there is a God, and now you have to stand infront of him to give account of your life and dis­be­lief and thrown into hell. It’s bet­ter to be safe than sor­ry. Only a fool would dis­s­re­gard God. Broth­ers and sis­ters, do not let this man dis­cour­age your from the Lord.

              Reply
              1. Rick Beckman Avatar
                Rick Beckman

                Wel­come to my site. I appre­ci­ate you teach­ing me how to behave on my own lawn. Thank good­ness you’re here to enlight­en me through the impec­ca­ble apolo­getic of Pas­cal’s wager. Your sol­id log­ic and invi­ta­tion to kill myself has revealed the errors of my ways, and I’ll glad­ly dis­cuss the valid­i­ty of what you’re say­ing with God, if his ambas­sadors would ever arrange a meet­ing rather than just talk­ing about my death. If the mur­der­er Moses could get a pri­vate meet­ing with God, I should be able to too. What sort of oper­a­tion is the Most High run­ning if he prefers the com­pa­ny of mur­der­ers? Ooh, yeah, a sham designed to con­trol peo­ple under the threat of eter­nal death… I can see why mur­der­ers would be attract­ed to that.

                Reply
                1. Bigman88 Avatar
                  Bigman88

                  Rick, God had chose these peo­ple who had com­mit­ted mur­der because he saw the innate qual­i­ty’s with­in them, and he saw that peo­ple like Moses (who got fedup and killed an Egypt­ian who was beat­ing the crap out of anoth­er Israelite), David and Paul would be strong, and faith­ful lead­ers who can car­ry his word and instruc­tion dili­gent­ly among the peo­ple. You read the bible, so you remem­ber that there was a short­age of tru­ly wor­thy peo­ple up to the Lords stan­dard. If the lord had any oth­er options, who would select bet­ter can­di­dates. But that is who was there at the time, and the Lord saw that their will, char­ac­ter, faith and lead­er­ship will be suf­fi­cient to lead the peo­ple. You also remem­ber that they com­mit­ted these acts before they knew God. God for­gave them after they repent­ed, and vowed to fol­low God’s lead. What you have to make a deci­sion and accept the real­i­ty of is God’s char­ac­ter (which i find is not bad at all, but does war­rant fear and aw); he loves us all, and wants the best for us, but on the oth­er hand he does not hide his dis­plea­sure, and in old tes­ta­ment days, and after Jesus’s return, that dis­plea­sure is met­ed out in fury and destruc­tion. He rec­og­nizes us as intel­li­gent, sen­tient, and fall­en beings who he wants to be as strong, alert, and upright as we are capa­ble of being, but on the oth­er hand, we are his cre­ations, and with­in the con­text of a God, he can do what­ev­er he wants with his creations.
                  We have placed our­selves and our worth on a very high pedestal, and that pedestal is above reproof, direc­tion, hum­ble­ness, and piety. This high pedestal is our own ideas formed with the help of Satan, who he threw off of that same pedestal, all the way out of heaven.
                  I used to be an athe­ist, but rec­og­nized God’s exis­tence and his grace about 4 years ago. How did you loose your faith?

                  Reply
                2. Barron Avatar
                  Barron

                  Rick, i am sor­ry for the respons­es of those who claim to know and love Jesus. The uni­verse and all sci­en­tif­ic laws prove that He exists (Psalm 19:1), or you could just look in the mirror. :-)
                  You don’t need any­one to arrange a meet­ing, you can do it your­self. If you gen­uine­ly call on Him, He will answer you. I chal­lenge you (in a good way) to sin­cere­ly ask Him to reveal Him­self to you (like “God, if You are real­ly there show me and help my unbe­lief”) every­day until He does (i almost put a num­ber of days but i decid­ed against it). He will make Him­self known to you — it may not be in an audi­ble voice, or a vision, or a dream, or in per­son, but He will answer your request. He love us deeply and wants us to know Him. I love you deeply (and I just “ran­dom­ly” found this page) and want you to know Him as well, beyond just truth and the­ol­o­gy as we under­stand in part on this earth. Bless­ings to you as you reach back towards Him (because He is always reach­ing towards us even when we don’t see or feel it).

                  Reply
                3. Craig Bryan Avatar
                  Craig Bryan

                  He went wrong with say­ing you should kill your­self. But to “Arrange a meet­ing” with God did­n’t work out that well with Job either. God asked Job 83 ques­tions and job could­n’t answer a sin­gle one. His first ques­tion, “Where wast thou when I laid the foun­da­tions of the earth? declare, if thou hast under­stand­ing.” See­ing how you can’t or any oth­er per­son on this earth could pos­si­ble answer that ques­tion. I would­n’t like to try and answer the rest. And sec­ond, per­son­al­ly I don’t know how Dueteron­o­my 22 could “kill” your faith, New Tes­ta­ment church­es today believe that Jesus got rid of the law. We use the Old Tes­ta­ment for learn­ing pur­pos­es as well as to track the geneal­o­gy of Jesus and the sto­ry of the Jews. The New Tes­ta­ment is where we see that we are no longer under the law, but grace. Also about the 500 name­less peo­ple. No they aren’t named, but think log­i­cal­ly for the time peri­od. There were many books from out­side sources that tried to dis­re­gard Christ say­ing he did­n’t raise from the dead, but that proves that Jesus was alive. And these 500 name­less peo­ple were able to defend it at the time. And If I’m cor­rect there are 39 books out­side of the Bible that ref­er­ence Christ. Many of those men­tion the 500 name­less peo­ple. That makes them more impor­tant. Those 500 name­less peo­ple prove that Jesus was alive at the time and rose from the dead after he was crucified.

                  Reply
                  1. COMALite J Avatar
                    COMALite J

                    Then where are the accounts of any of these 500 peo­ple? I want it in their words, not sec­ond-hand from Saul of Tar­sus (and even he didn’t quote any of them — he mere­ly said that “above five hun­dred brethren at once” had seen the risen Lord Jesus).

                    I tore that whole pas­sage apart months ago (back in June) in a Reply to Wayne. There’s a lot more wrong with it than just the name­less, word­less 500 “wit­ness­es” (wit­ness­es are only worth some­thing if you can hear or read their own tes­ti­mo­ny — try Paul’s tac­tic in a court case and see how far you get). It flat­ly con­tra­dicts all four Gospel accounts of Jesus’s Res­ur­rec­tion (which also con­tra­dict each oth­er) on numer­ous points.

                    Reply
        4. Jeff Avatar
          Jeff

          You were always an athe­ist, the truth is, you were nev­er a Chris­t­ian or you would have con­tin­ued on in the faith. 

          You hate God because you love your sin,
          Repent and believe, or you too will perish.

          Reply
          1. Rick Beckman Avatar
            Rick Beckman

            Give me a bet­ter rea­son to repent; we all per­ish in the end, so that’s no real argument.

            Reply
            1. Craig Bryan Avatar
              Craig Bryan

              Luke 13:3 says ” I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all like­wise per­ish” we don’t all per­ish in the end. Only those who did not repent. If you do repent, you will be saved. I’ll give you a few verses.
              Romans 3:23
              Romans 5:8,12
              Romans 6:23
              Luke 13:3
              Romans 10:9–10, 13
              These vers­es first say we are all sin­ners and the lat­ter vers­es say that even though we are sin­ners, Christ died for us to pay for our sins and every­one can be saved.

              Reply
            2. richard johnson Avatar
              richard johnson

              What is the expla­na­tion for the exis­tence of jew­ish peo­ple who have been afflict­ed and mur­dered and per­se­cut­ed where ever they went in the 4 cor­ners of the earth for the last 2000 years yet they still main­tain their reli­gion and iden­ti­ty. They are unique in the worlds peo­ples. My view is that God has only cre­at­ed one reli­gion in the his­to­ry of man and that was the jew­ish reli­gion and the promis­es made to Israel . Israel was set aside 200 years ago and despite 1948 it still is set aside and has not been reformed.

              Reply
          2. COMALite J Avatar
            COMALite J

            Of all the lame things Dis­pen­sa­tion­al­ist “Chris­tians” (Dis­pen­sa­tion­al­ism is a false cult that would still be false even if Chris­tian­i­ty in any form were true), this one is the sil­li­est and most hyp­o­crit­i­cal (remem­ber, hypocrisy is the one sin that your Lord and Sav­ior con­demned more times than He did any oth­er sin!).

            You hon­est­ly think that we athe­ists (includ­ing both our host Rick Beck­man and me) want to be athe­ists just because we wan­na sin and get away with it? Real­ly!? You think we actu­al­ly want to believe that. some­day, we’re gonna die, and when we do, that’s it? No Heav­en, no Hell, no Par­adise, no Pur­ga­to­ry, no Lim­bo, no Elysian Fields, no Hades, no Val­hal­la, no Hel in Nif­fel­heim, no Hap­py Hunt­ing Grounds, no Spir­it World, no rein­car­na­tion nor Nir­vana, just pfft lights out? The Noth­ing­ness of Mu? Obliv­ion? That we’re nev­er gonna see any of our depart­ed loved ones ever again? You actu­al­ly think we want to believe all of that, just so we can, what, shop on Sun­day? Read a Play­boy?

            But that’s not the hyp­o­crit­i­cal part. That’s just the very, very sil­ly part. The hyp­o­crit­i­cal part is this: Your. reli­gion actu­al­ly does offer the “Sin All You Want and Get Away With It™” Plan! That’s what you believe, right? Accept Jesus Christ as Per­son­al Sav­ior by speak­ing, just once, a rough­ly two-dozen-word Sinner’s Prayer, and that’s it! !00% guar­an­teed Eter­nal Sal­va­tion® or your immor­tal soul back! No mat­ter what you do (with the pos­si­ble excep­tion of Deny­ing or Blas­phem­ing the Holy Ghost) or don’t do. Steal the retire­ment funds of thou­sands of peo­ple? Bear false wit­ness in a court of law? Betray your fam­i­ly or nation? Com­mit adul­tery? Rape chil­dren? Par­tic­i­pate in or even mas­ter­mind a geno­cide? No prob­le­mo! You’re saved, right? Is that not what you believe? Jesus done paid for all that, and all you have to do is accept it and you’re saved — no mat­ter what you did before, or do thereafter!

            Take Jef­frey Dah­mer, for instance. You remem­ber him, right? In the 90s, IIRC. He lured Asian-Amer­i­can chil­dren and youth to his home where he raped, then butchered, then cooked and ate, them. Yet while in prison he accept­ed Jesus Christ as Per­son­al Sav­ior, so he’s saved, right? And he still would’ve been even if he’d sub­se­quent­ly got­ten out (either on good behav­ior or by escap­ing) and then lured and raped and chopped up and cooked and ate a few more dozen Asian-Amer­i­can youth, right? But no, he was mur­dered in prison by his fel­low pris­on­ers who couldn’t stand being in the pres­ence of some­one who’d done that lev­el of evil.

            Yet what about those Asian-Amer­i­can youth he lured and raped and sliced and diced and cooked and ate? Well, many of them were prob­a­bly Bud­dhist or Shin­to or some oth­er East­ern “pagan” reli­gion, not Chris­t­ian, so they nev­er accept­ed Jesus Christ as Per­son­al Sav­ior. So even if they lived absolute­ly blame­less lives, had been lov­ing to their par­ents and younger sib­lings and the elder­ly in their com­mu­ni­ties and such, only to have their lives end in such a hor­rif­ic man­ner before they even reached matu­ri­ty, and now they’re burn­ing in Hell until Judg­ment Day when they’ll be res­ur­rect­ed and judged guilty for not hav­ing their names writ­ten in the Book of Life of the Lamb Slain from before the foun­da­tion of the world even though the man who mur­dered them so hor­rif­i­cal­ly is found writ­ten there, then they get to watch Jef­frey Dah­mer waltz on into the Holy City to receive the white stone and new name and sing the new song for­ev­er and ever, while they get cast into the Lake of Fire Burn­ing with Brim­stone, which is the Sec­ond Death, and the smoke ascen­deth there­from for­ev­er and ever?

            Is that not what you believe? “But let thine [answer] be, yea, yea [Yes], or nay, nay [No], for more than this cometh of evil.” Answer as He com­mand­ed you: Yes or No? No fur­ther expla­na­tion than that, because that would be evil accord­ing to He Him­self. Yes, or No?

            Reply
    4. Gene Donaldson Avatar
      Gene Donaldson

      All of them.

      Reply
    5. Benjamin Carlson Avatar
      Benjamin Carlson

      You can access an elec­tron­ic copy of God’s word here: https://www.lds.org/media-library?cid=HP16MLB&lang=eng

      You can also order paper copies from them on anoth­er page with­in this web­site. They only charge the cost of pro­duc­tion. It is entire­ly non-prof­it. Enjoy!

      Reply
  2. Gordon James Avatar
    Gordon James

    Hi all.

    In the ver­sion issue there a a whole host of opinions.
    Much of the dis­cus­sion gen­er­ates more heat(argument) than light(understanding).

    Here is my take.

    1. The best ver­sion is one you read faith­full and understand.
    2. I like more lit­er­al versions.
    3. Some ver­sions are eas­i­er for pub­lic reading.
    (NIV is my favourite in the pulpit)
    4. Some lit­er­al ver­sions (NASB) help you know which Greek and
    Hebrew words were used in the orig­i­nal text.
    5. Know­ing that each has strengths and weak­ness­es I pick a
    dif­fer­ent ver­sion each year to read through.
    6. Some para­phras­es (NOT A TRANSLATION) help me put difficult
    con­cepts into easy lan­guage. (I like “The Message”)

    Reply
    1. Rick Beckman Avatar
      Rick Beckman

      That’s a wise posi­tion, Gor­don, and I appre­ci­ate your empha­sis in #6.

      I’ll also add that when a trans­la­tion uses dynam­ic equiv­a­len­cy (as the NIV and oth­ers do) rather than more lit­er­al meth­ods of trans­la­tion, there are points where what you’re read­ing isn’t trans­la­tion but is inter­pre­ta­tion. An exam­ple of this is in the KJV, the phrase “God for­bid” should be “may it not be so” or sim­i­lar; the trans­la­tors inter­pret­ed “God” into the text, but it real­ly isn’t there.

      Reply
    2. John Avatar
      John

      Gor­don, I just want­ed to cor­rect your #4:
      the post-1995 NASB, and most oth­er mod­ern trans­la­tions, are based on the West­cott and Hort crit­i­cal translation.
      This trans­la­tion was based most­ly on West­cott and Hort’s bias­es and has many flaws in it. It does NOT rep­re­sent which Greek and
      Hebrew words were used in the orig­i­nal text in any way whatsoever.
      We can nev­er ful­ly know exact­ly what words were in the ORIGINAL text since we don’t have the orig­i­nal texts. We can only make judg­ments based on quan­ti­ty and qual­i­ty of the texts we do have.
      BUT, the most impor­tant thing is that we have true Faith .. helped by read­ing His Word and Prayer!

      Reply
    3. Blessed Avatar
      Blessed

      Wow! Jor­dan you should be real­ly scared that a Hell­bound self pro­claimed God hater agrees with your stance on Bible trans­la­tions. You’ve tak­en the side of Satan and cast doubt on Gods words. You should cry out to God in repen­tance for the many peo­ple you have caused to doubt.

      Reply
  3. raj Avatar
    raj

    Only the KJV 1611 is the ver­sion God gave his peo­ple. Fel­low­ships are so screwed up today because if these fake bibles like the witch­es bible: NIV — they should be the most excit­ing place in the world to go to — but are in fact the most dull and bor­ing places where heretics dance the dance of death. These peo­ple who use these bibles nei­ther under­stand nor can help any­one else with the Lord truth. They are also lis­ten­ing but nev­er hear­ing, always know­ing but nev­er under­stand­ing, always watch­ing but nev­er see­ing. FOOLS: catch up with the truth: read Gail Riplinger

    [admin edit — removed bro­ken link]

    Reply
    1. Michele Avatar
      Michele

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7KRPwKnhxs

      This video com­pares some of the versions

      Reply
    2. patrick Avatar
      patrick

      so the major­i­ty of Chris­tians in the world who can­not speak or read Eng­lish (eg can­not under­stand the KJV Bible of 1611 — Jesus did­nt speak Eng­lish) are being deceived — because they are using Ara­bic, Urdu, etc Bible ver­sions? So God is only cen­tred on the Eng­lish speak­ing world, in evan­ge­lis­ing and teach­ing them using the KJV — to hell with the rest?

      The only ones who pre­fer, [self cent­ed] decep­tion — pre­fer it to truth, I think (as found in 2 Tim 3⁄4) are the King James Only sect.

      Reply
      1. Mark Avatar
        Mark

        Many that are called KJV only sim­ply use the KJV because it is the best Eng­lish trans­la­tion and they speak English…obviously. If gheir orin­i­nal lan­guage was­nt Eng­lish they would use one of these good trans­la­tions in their language.
        Eng­lish — AV/KJV
        French — Olivetan
        Ger­man — Luther’s
        Span­ish — Reina-Valera
        Ara­bic — Van Dyck
        Taga­log — Ang Biblia
        Russ­ian — Synodal
        Ukrain­ian — Kulisch
        Dutch — Statenvertaling
        Ital­ian — Diodati
        Por­tuguese — Alme­dia Cor­rigi­da Fiel
        Pol­ish — Gdansk
        Mal­tese — Zammit
        Napali — TBS Version
        Hun­gar­i­an — Karoli
        Roman­ian — Cornilescu
        Hebrew — Masoretic
        Greek — Tex­tus Receptus

        Reply
    3. Tony Avatar
      Tony

      Read Gail Riplinger? Even her schol­ar­ly con­tem­po­raries want noth­ing to do w/her. But it’s free coun­try and I have Jesus in my heart and a CSB in my hand on my way to heaven!

      Reply
  4. raj Avatar
    raj

    Thanks Rick (Beck­man) for your com­ments on the dif­fer­ent vers­es — it was a real eye open­er. I use e‑sword to study the bible and I was hav­ing a prob­lem, with some word search­es. I was search­ing in KJV but only using KJV 1611 for study: but some words did not have the same ‘count’ in the KJV and KJV 1611. Some words are mis­pelled in the KJV 1611 like ‘deuil’ also once spelled ‘div­el’. I guess with­out com­put­er tech­nol­o­gy and dif­fer­ent ‘com­pa­nies’ of schol­ars work­ing on this amaz­ing work some mis­spelling slips occurred — but this did not change the mean­ing. Anoth­er com­mon mis­spelled word spelt three dif­fer­ent ways was: Liar, Lyar, Lyer — all found in KJV 1611. But the men used for this bible ver­sion word for word trans­la­tion are remark­able in them­selves — these men were not today’s half baked donuts that preach or teach in pul­pits and the­ol­o­gy col­leges: here is a his­to­ry of the trans­la­tors of the great­est bible and only bible God gave us KJV1611 Trans­la­tors: http://www.wilderness-cry.net/bible_study/translators/

    Reply
  5. Jeremy Farley Avatar
    Jeremy Farley

    I respect­ful­ly wish to ask the fol­low­ing question:

    Con­sid­er­ing Daniel only had man­u­scripts and no auto­graphs of the Pen­ta­teuch, when he wrote his book then it can be con­clud­ed that at no time has any one per­son ever had the com­plete and orig­i­nal copy of the Word of Copy.

    There­fore it would only make since that God has once inspired his Word and for­ev­er pre­served it.

    God’s Word is per­fect, com­plete, and pre­served- hope­ful­ly all of us are in agree­ment of that fact… and rec­og­niz­ing that the Byzan­tine & Alexan­dri­an Texts dis­agree with each oth­er as do all of the Ver­sions of the Bible with each oth­er, one can only con­clude that:
    A) All are cor­rupt and flawed…
    Only prob­lem is that this would dis­prove Pslam 12.6‑, Matt 24.35, I Pet 1.25
    …but see­ing that the Word is flawed would it real­ly matter?

    B) One is cor­rect and the rest are all corrupt…
    See­ing that the NIV which is derived from the Alexan­dri­an Text removes “through his blood” from Colos­sians, while the King James con­tains “through his blood” which is found in the Byzan­tine (Anti­och) Text, would­n’t it make sense that one must be wrong?

    Also the NIV, NASB, NKJV, and KJV all dis­agree in some major way with everyother ver­sion as do the Byzan­tine Texts with the Alexan­dri­an Texts- there­fore by rea­son of com­mon sense it would only seem log­i­cal that only one of the texts and ver­sions can be the “Per­fect and com­plete word of God.”

    Fur­ther­more, Christ quot­ed Old Tes­ta­ment Hebrew pas­sages in Greek and no per­son accused him of believ­ing in dou­ble inspiration.

    God’s Word has not been dou­ble inspired- it was breathed only once. How­ev­er, every time we find God breath­ing in the Bible it was eter­nal­ly and perfectly-

    He breathed upon Adam once- but yet I and you still have that same breath of life with­in us today. Christ breathed upon his dis­ci­ples and they received the Holy Ghost and nev­er lost it. God breathed his word pri­or to the foun­da­tions of the earth were laid, and I still have a per­fect copy of it today- not dou­ble inspi­ra­tion… Once inspired, for­ev­er preserved!

    Respect­ful­ly,
    Jere­my Farley

    Reply
  6. hardpan Avatar
    hardpan

    You know my broth­er? the holy papa loves folks like you. Wan­na guess why bib­li­cal chris­tianty is long gone? A ver­sion for every heresy amen, if ya gona teach it ya got have a book for it, amen. May God have mercy.
    Hardpan

    Reply
    1. Wayne Avatar
      Wayne

      Amen!

      Reply
  7. Samuel Avatar
    Samuel

    There is one reli­able ver­sion to teach from, the King James ver­sion. Untill around 1650 no stan­dard of spelling was estab­lished, so no won­der there are dif­fer­ent spellings of words in ear­li­er edi­tions of the KJV. Ear­ly print­ers were noto­ri­ous for leav­ing out, chang­ing, or adding words, to make their type set to fit the page. So this is the rea­son for the errors up until 1769. This is when the edi­tion you have today was print­ed, and all sub­se­quent copies are from.

    As for Cam­bridge, and Oxford dif­fer­ences, that is a result of print­er dis­agree­ments on trans­la­tion of two or three words. Of which no doc­trine is changed or compromised.

    Reply
    1. Rick Beckman Avatar
      Rick Beckman

      You’re miss­ing the point, Samuel. King James Only­ists can­not claim that the King James Ver­sion is per­fect if there are vary­ing dis­crep­an­cies between the still-used edi­tions. Only­ists often point out that mod­ern trans­la­tions “con­tra­dict” each oth­er. If edi­tions of the King James Ver­sion “con­tra­dict” each oth­er, then Only­ists either need to put up or shut up.

      Reply
      1. Samuel Avatar
        Samuel

        As I see it, Oxford has remained as is since 1769. Cam­bridge on the oth­er hand has changed, sev­er­al edi­tions of the Cam­bridge dif­fer. Only the PCE “Pure Cam­bridge Edi­tion” is accept­ed by the KJVO folks. That one has been out of print since 1980, but some of the Cameo edi­tions still use the same plates.

        But still there remains the two or three word dif­fer­ence between the PCE, and the Oxford. But its not enough, nor does it change any­thing doc­tri­nal­ly to grum­ble about, except for some KJV rad­i­cal. Which real­ly do them­selves, and every­one else a dis­ser­vice, because a rad­i­cal can nev­er con­vince any­one. As far as I am con­cerned the KJV is the only trust­ful, and reli­able Bible we have. But that is only my opinion.

        Reply
        1. Rick Beckman Avatar
          Rick Beckman

          The “Bible Ver­sions” page on your site men­tions that numer­ous ver­sions — includ­ing my favorite, the Eng­lish Stan­dard — are “excel­lent.”

          I tend to agree with your site in that regard. :)

          [admin note — the site in ques­tion no longer worked as of 2015-08-26, and so the links were removed]

          Reply
          1. Samuel Avatar
            Samuel

            Most of the ver­sions men­tioned on my site, are reli­able ver­sions of their respec­tive man­u­scripts. Of course; you can’t con­sid­er the para­phrase edi­tions, in the same light.

            I just hap­pen to favor the Tex­tus Recep­tus, over the Sinaiti­cus and Vat­i­canus . But use the NASB along with the KJV, for Bible Stud­ies. The NASB I use is a pre 1995 edi­tion, I feel it is more accu­rate than the lat­er edi­tion. Which left word for word trans­la­tion, for a dynam­ic prin­ci­ple translation.

            Reply
      2. PeterAV Avatar
        PeterAV

        You’re miss­ing the point, Samuel. King James Only­ists can­not claim that the King James Ver­sion is per­fect if there are vary­ing dis­crep­an­cies between the still-used edi­tions. Only­ists often point out that mod­ern trans­la­tions “con­tra­dict” each oth­er. If edi­tions of the King James Ver­sion “con­tra­dict” each oth­er, then Only­ists either need to put up or shut up.
        *******
        We all know the answer to that one, don’t we, now.
        The final Tetus Recep­tus is the Eng­lish Pure Cam­bridge Edi­tion [CIRCA 1900 to now]of the AV1611.
        It has no errat­ta whatsoever.
        *******
        Looks like some­one else needs to close his mouth to be esteemed wise.
        God gets the last laugh.
        But would­n’t you pre­fer his mercy?
        *******
        PeterAV
        Every word of God is pure:
        Many do not believe that verse.

        Reply
  8. Chad Avatar
    Chad

    Your argu­ments seem nice, but the whole of the issue has been proven false by F.H.A. Scriven­er in the late 1800’s. He was a crit­i­cal text sup­port­er and stat­ed that the brunt of all changes were spelling stan­dard­iza­tion, gram­mar stan­dard­iz­tion, cor­rec­tions of print­er errors and oth­er such items. He even stat­ed that many of the so-called errors were due to the copy­ists mis­read­ing the man­u­scripts. So, if some­one makes a mis­take in print­ing does that make preser­va­tion null and void? No, because the error was not the writer’s fault. For exam­ple, let’s say you make a per­fect trans­la­tion of The Ili­ad or some oth­er such work. Now, you turn that copy over to the print­er to be print­ed. Now, the print­er takes that copy and sets it up for print­ing. Now, spelling and gram­mar have already been stan­dard­ized so we can say there is no issue there. But what if when they print some char­ac­ters begin to look blocked out like [][][][][] as can hap­pen when com­put­ers have issues read­ing cer­tain fonts. On top of that let’s say that the com­put­er decid­ed cer­tain words were mis­spelled and cor­rect­ed them such as their with they’re and your with you’re. On top of that let’s say that the print­er was an old­er one and that it pos­si­bly dropped the let­ter t every fifth time. So there we now have a pletho­ra of errors in mod­ern day print­ing and the first edi­tion of your trans­la­tion is flawed. Now, was the man­u­script imper­fect? Of course not. It was print­er errors. Do the print­er errors make your trans­la­tion imper­fect? No, it does not. What you do is you go back and print a revi­sion. Now, even ene­mies of the KJV Only group can admit this was the case. Sec­u­lar schol­ars can also attest to the fact. When the orig­i­nal copy­ists were doing their hand set­ting, let­ter by let­ter and page by page print­ing of the first edi­tion, some of them had the man­u­scripts read to them and some read it as they went along. First­ly, there were very poor light­ing con­di­tions in these print­ing shops and most print­ing was done by can­dle­light. Also there were issues with the print­ers read­ing one thing and type­set­ting anoth­er thing. Add to that the fact that some of these type­set­ters had print­ed pre­vi­ous Eng­lish Bibles so they knew some pas­sages at the very least by heart. So, as they type­set they could read one pas­sage and eas­i­ly go to set the type for it and acci­den­tal­ly type­set for a read­ing they remem­bered from a pre­vi­ous trans­la­tion. Now, do these errors make the orig­i­nal KJV man­u­script in error? Of course not. And the fact that some of the trans­la­tors worked to cor­rect these errors intro­duced through the print­er’s errors is evi­dent that they noticed their text was not the same as they had pre­sent­ed for print­ing. Any intel­li­gent per­son can tell the dif­fer­ence between what kind of edit­ing was going on with the KJV of 1611 and the print­ing con­di­tions through­out that time and see that the argu­ment of all of these sup­posed dif­fer­ences melts away. As stat­ed before, F.H.A. Scriven­er found rough­ly 400 dif­fer­ences in the KJV edi­tions between 1611 and 1769. Sec­u­lar schol­ar­ship and oth­er Chris­t­ian schol­ars have attest­ed it was indeed most­ly due to the print­ers read­ing into the man­u­script what they knew from pre­vi­ous print­ings. As far as the issue between the read­ings that Oxford and Cam­bridge have today, it is evi­dent that there is one in error that main­tained a print­ing error over time and has not changed it since. The prop­er read­ings are found in the Cam­bridge prints. I have stud­ied this for near­ly a decade and have found that KJV Only peo­ple and Orig­i­nal Auto­graph Only peo­ple on both sides have out­right lied, pre­sent­ed false or erro­neous his­tor­i­cal accounts and facts and/or repeat­ed talk­ing points like most peo­ple often do. It is for that rea­son I am work­ing on a book to dis­pel these errors. A good read about the trans­la­tion of the KJV would be Adam Nichol­son’s book God’s Sec­re­taries. He is not KJV Only or Orig­i­nal Auto­graph Only. He is just a his­to­ri­an that has set about to gath­er facts that oth­ers have mud­died over or misrepresented.

    Reply
    1. Chad Avatar
      Chad

      Oh, and I for­got to ask, how do print­er’s errors negate a KJV Only per­son from believ­ing in a pre­served text? After all, the orig­i­nal man­u­script was not in error and that was the stan­dard used in cor­rect­ing it. In fact, to a KJV Only believ­er it would only seem to sup­port their belief and not hurt it that God pre­served His Word, as pre­serve means to guard or to keep safe, by see­ing that learned men noticed the print­ing errors and worked to edit them out. So, in all fair­ness they can say they have a 1769 edi­tion of the 1611. Those errors would not mean the work itself was erro­neous­ness. I am just curi­ous on your take on that. That’s all.

      Reply
    2. Rick Beckman Avatar
      Rick Beckman

      God did not say He would “pre­serve” the Scrip­tures. Psalm 12:7 says that God will pro­tect His peo­ple… well, unless you’re a King James Only­ist and are stuck with how it ren­ders the verse.

      You men­tioned that the King James Ver­sion was “cor­rect­ed” by com­par­ing pub­li­ca­tions of it to the “orig­i­nal” — the orig­i­nal what? There are not orig­i­nal man­u­scripts, and the man­u­scripts the King James trans­la­tors did have were rather late man­u­scripts, some of which were heav­i­ly influ­enced by the Vul­gate (not to men­tion King James’ own adher­ence to Church of Eng­land-esque terminology).

      Today’s King James Ver­sion (of which there are at least TWO in com­mon usage) dif­fers from that in 1611. That’s a fact. Which one is “per­fect”? You did­n’t answer that question.

      Reply
      1. Chad Avatar
        Chad

        Shame­ful Rick. The man­u­scripts the KJV Trans­la­tors did not only have late Man­u­scripts and none were that influ­enced by the Vul­gate. I thought you had stud­ied the sec­u­lar accounts made by his­to­ri­ans through­out the world on that mat­ter. I can see now you either are repeat­ing some things you were told or sim­ply have not stud­ied this in depth as you seem to say you did. Yes, the King James Trans­la­tors had an orig­i­nal man­u­script they pre­pared to print that they could con­sult with to ensure that the print­ed text was the same as their work. If you can find this to be untrue I would love to know, but as of now I am quite uncer­tain of your schol­ar­ship in that area.As I stat­ed apographs are not orig­i­nals, but the King James Trans­la­tors could com­pare their orig­i­nal trans­la­tion man­u­script. Please read more care­ful­ly. Have I said I was King James Only? If you were to ask me which of the two pub­lished are more cor­rect in their ren­der­ing , I already stat­ed that the Cam­bridge held the cor­rect read­ings, not the Oxford. I see that in spite of all of the schol­ar­ly facts I laid out for you you are more wor­ried about try­ing to prove there is no exact repli­ca of the 1611 avail­able today. Who said there was? After all there were sev­er­al edi­tions print­ed in 1611 that dif­fered from one anoth­er. How­ev­er, if the text was per­fect and the print­ing was flawed, then who are you to make the stan­dard the prod­uct and not the orig­i­nal Eng­lish man­u­script all the pro­duc­tion was to take place from? That is a ques­tion no one has ever dared to answer.

        Reply
      2. Loren Sanders Avatar
        Loren Sanders

        I hap­pened upon your site while doing some research, and decid­ed to read through some posts to see if the over­all spir­it of the dis­agree­ments on this have changed at all since last I both­ered to dis­cuss it at any length with someone. 

        Sad­ly I see that for the most part, they have not. Case in point: In post #14–15 Chad stat­ed his ques­tions and argu­ments both very well, and as was plain in what he wrote — did not iden­ti­fy him­self as, nor did he paint him­self as an “Only­ist”. In fact, he made it rather clear that he was not one of that per­sua­sion. See his posts:

        Chad August 30, 2009 at 12:50 am
        Your argu­ments seem nice, but the whole of the issue has been proven false by F.H.A. Scriven­er in the late 1800’s. Those errors would not mean the work itself was erro­neous­ness. I am just curi­ous on your take on that. That’s all.

        Your imme­di­ate response began with this:

        Rick Beck­man August 30, 2009 at 5:32 am
        God did not say He would “pre­serve” the Scrip­tures. Psalm 12:7 says that God will pro­tect His peo­ple… well, unless you’re a King James Only­ist and are stuck with how it ren­ders the verse.

        In that one para­graph alone you made your real inten­tions utter­ly clear — to do your lev­el best to defame and den­i­grate in every way pos­si­ble the dread­ed “King James Only­ist’s” you so obvi­ous­ly fear will bring about the destruc­tion of the known world.

        You are so con­sumed with hatred for this group of peo­ple and your mis­sion to lead every­one else to the truth as you see it, that you can­not engage in a rea­son­able or hon­est dis­course regard­ing it with any­one who does not see things exact­ly as you do. In respond­ing to Chad, you were utter­ly ungra­cious, snide even, and ignored every­thing he said in his post in order to just loud­ly reit­er­ate your war chant. Ter­ri­ble behavior.

        I have to agree with Chad, that your obvi­ous attempts at obfus­ca­tion of facts and ques­tions you can­not prop­er­ly answer or refute make it plain that the vast major­i­ty of your knowl­edge on the sub­ject is lit­tle more than anec­do­tal pro­pa­gan­da; and that your rea­son for “dis­cussing” it here is not to edi­fy or enlight­en any­one in any way that is God-hon­or­ing, it is only an out­let for you to ham­mer at a group of peo­ple you feel such a deep con­tempt and loathing toward. 

        You so eas­i­ly place your ene­mies under the blan­ket label of “Only­ist” (in essence assign­ing them their scar­let let­ter), mak­ing the very term sound evil and wor­thy of hunt­ing down and cast­ing out…I can only won­der how many oth­er labels you like­ly use to fur­ther cat­e­go­rize peo­ple and thus show your­self as above them, as superior.

        The issue of Bible inerran­cy and trans­la­tion­al dif­fer­ences is def­i­nite­ly one worth being stud­ied, and one worth using in an attempt to draw broth­ers and sis­ters in Christ clos­er to God and clos­er to one anoth­er. To use it as an axe to slice the body into ever small­er pieces? Espe­cial­ly when it becomes obvi­ous by what is writ­ten here that the pur­pose is to win against an oppo­nent, not to win the day for Christ Jesus? I think not.

        May God in His wis­dom guide your every step as He deter­mines each beat of your heart.

        We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love abides in death. Every­one who hates his broth­er is a mur­der­er; and you know that no mur­der­er has eter­nal life abid­ing in him. — 1John 3:14–15

        Reply
        1. Rick Beckman Avatar
          Rick Beckman

          I nev­er called Chad a King James Only­ist. I respond­ed main­ly to his sec­ond com­ment which referred more to scrip­tur­al mat­ters than his first com­ment did — I’m unfa­mil­iar with Scriven­er or his work, so I had noth­ing to add to or reply to con­cern­ing Chad’s first comment.

          I did­n’t even attack King James Only­ists in the com­ment of mine to which you refer; all I said was that they are stuck with how the King James Ver­sion ren­ders a verse (this is true by def­i­n­i­tion, not any abstract rea­son­ing of my own).

          If that con­sti­tutes any sort of neg­a­tiv­i­ty or fear toward King James Only­ists, then I’d hate to see how you’d take an actu­al attack against them.

          But then I also would like to note that your reply to me did not fur­ther any argu­ment bib­li­cal­ly; my argu­ment is and always will be that King James Only­ism is inde­fen­si­ble on the basis of sola Scrip­tura. From that sim­ply foun­da­tion, plen­ty of argu­ments can be made against Only­ism, such as the incon­sis­ten­cy in avail­able King James Ver­sions as not­ed above.

          Reply
        2. Tony Avatar
          Tony

          Lori: you Accuse Rick of hatred because he doesn’t agree w/your posi­tion or Chad’s comes across as Left­wing think­ing & reac­tion. Chad is a clos­et KJVO. If Chad tru­ly knew the his­to­ry of the TRs & KJV trans­la­tion process he would NOT that posi­tion. Dis­agree­ment isn’t hatred.

          Reply
      3. Mark Avatar
        Mark

        Preser­va­tion of Scripture

        2 Peter 1:21

        “For the prophe­cy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost”

        2 Tim­o­thy 3:16–17

        “All scrip­ture is giv­en by inspi­ra­tion of God, and is prof­itable for doc­trine, for reproof, for cor­rec­tion, for instruc­tion in righteousness:
        That the man of God may be per­fect, thor­ough­ly fur­nished unto all good works”

        Psalm 12:6–7

        “The words of the Lord are pure words: as sil­ver tried in a fur­nace of earth, puri­fied sev­en times.
        Thou shalt keep them, O Lord, thou shalt pre­serve them from this gen­er­a­tion for ever”

        Mark 13:31

        “Heav­en and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away.”

        1 Peter 1:25

        “But the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.”

        Reply
    3. Wally Avatar
      Wally

      Amen to Chads response ! well said broth­er !! Please keep up your perserver­ence for Gods word . You com­ment­ed that you were writ­ing a book and I would appre­ci­ate info about obtain­ing a copy when avail­able . [email protected]

      Reply
    4. Nathan Avatar
      Nathan

      I go to a Chris­t­ian col­lege and I think that I am the only KJVO per­son on cam­pus. I haven’t met anoth­er one at least. Chad’s argu­ments are great and he cer­tain­ly knows what he is talk­ing about. With­out even doing any study of the his­to­ry of bible ver­sions I know that this KJV con­tains no errors and no con­tra­dic­tions. I don’t real­ly care if it’s 1611 1769 or 1980. What­ev­er it is, it is right. Chad gave you the his­to­ry les­son and I loved it. I’m going to give the God les­son. God cre­at­ed the heav­en and the earth right? Why is He dead today? Can the Almighty not make a bible that is 100% right for His Eng­lish speak­ing peo­ple. No the Word of God is not con­fined to the KJV. It is found in bits and pieces in tracts, hym­nals, and var­i­ous oth­er ver­sions of the bible. I don’t see why I come under attack so often for believ­ing God pre­served His scrip­ture for me and put it into Eng­lish through men. Moses broke the tablets, was God’s word lost for­ev­er? No, God made Moses write the tablets again. God has­n’t for­got­ten His word, so rather than argue about it and make more peo­ple athe­ist let’s pray for those who are lost like rick. Mak­ing peo­ple athe­ist and destroy­ing their faith is the will of the dev­il not God. You can get saved read­ing any bible ver­sion, but after read­ing a few pas­sages from oth­er bible ver­sion I real­ized mine makes the most sense. I will always be KJVO, and I pray for those who aren’t. Woe is me if I turn any­one away from Christ. I only want to build of oth­er peo­ple’s faith in the Lord. I sin­cere­ly believe that the KJV is the Word of God. As i said before it’s not con­fined to the KJV, but there are no errors in it.

      Reply
      1. Dr Davy Avatar
        Dr Davy

        Nathan said: “With­out even doing any study of the his­to­ry of bible ver­sions I know that this KJV con­tains no errors and no con­tra­dic­tions. I don’t real­ly care if it’s 1611 1769 or 1980. What­ev­er it is, it is right. … I will always be KJVO … I sin­cere­ly believe that the KJV is the Word of God.”
        Nathan is not open to rea­son. He has made his deci­sion. It has become a mat­ter of faith, and rea­son does not play a part in it anymore.
        That’s what it comes down to for many KJVO peo­ple. It is not a mat­ter of logic–it’s a mat­ter of faith.
        The King James ver­sion is a good lit­er­al trans­la­tion. How­ev­er, the archa­ic lan­guage is an obsta­cle to com­pre­hen­sion. Oth­er good revi­sions and translations–like NASB, ESV, and HCSB–are good, essen­tial­ly lit­er­al trans­la­tions that do not hin­der com­pre­hen­sion. Why not use these new ones?

        Reply
        1. Joe Avatar
          Joe

          What about the miss­ing ver­sus that were delet­ed by the Jesuits? Many of the new age bibles even claim that Elhanan killed Gol­liath which is com­plete­ly wrong.

          Reply
          1. Tony Avatar
            Tony

            What about the added words, etc by the scribes & copy­ists dur­ing the pre­vi­ous 1000 before Eras­mus, Luther, etc?!

            Reply
        2. Mark Avatar
          Mark

          The KJV is the eas­i­est to read with the low­est aver­age grade read­ing lev­el. It is writ­ten in mod­ern Eng­lish and every sin­gle word there­in can be found in a mod­ern dic­tio­nary. Cer­tain­ly there will be a word that one must look up a def­i­n­i­tion here and there no mat­ter what book you are read­ing. Read the eas­i­est Bible to read and the one the Holy Spir­it of God Works through..the KJV the best trans­la­tion in English

          Reply
          1. Rick Beckman Avatar
            Rick Beckman

            “Low­est aver­age grade read­ing lev­el” is sub­jec­tive; what method­ol­o­gy are you using? One does­n’t have to search long for trans­la­tions that are writ­ten in a vast­ly eas­i­er to read man­ner.

            Addi­tion­al­ly, the King James Ver­sion con­tains the word “quater­nions,” which does­n’t appear in Mer­ri­am-Web­ster, though it does appear in oth­ers. Still, I doubt any­one will mis­take this word for “mod­ern Eng­lish,” dit­to for many of these. You can claim they are mod­ern Eng­lish all you want, but I doubt many of them enjoy much use at all out­side of dis­cussing archa­ic Bible trans­la­tions, mean­ing the words are only stay­ing rel­e­vant because peo­ple insist on keep­ing an archa­ic book rel­e­vant on the claims that it isn’t out­dat­ed at all. (Which is, in toto, bollocks.)

            Reply
        3. Mark Avatar
          Mark

          The KJV is the eas­i­est to read with the low­est aver­age grade read­ing lev­el out of all Eng­lish ver­sions out there. The KJV is writ­ten in mod­ern Eng­lish and every sin­gle word there­in can be found in a mod­ern dic­tio­nary. Cer­tain­ly there will be a word that one must look up a def­i­n­i­tion here and there no mat­ter what book you are read­ing. Read the eas­i­est Bible to read and the one the Holy Spir­it of God Works through..the KJV the best trans­la­tion in English.

          Reply
  9. Nikola Vukov Avatar
    Nikola Vukov

    Dear friends in Christ,

    May the good Lord be with you and bless you and your work for Him more and more!

    I am Bap­tist pas­tor in the full time min­istry for more than 38 years. I would like to have a copy “The KJV Bible- 1611”, but my prob­lem is that I would real­ly need this pre­cious Book, but am not able to pay for the book.
    I am not KJV Onlyist!

    So I beg you for a copy (even old used book) and I’ll nev­er, nev­er for­get your love-gift and your kind­ness. Thank you indeed for your under­stand­ing and help. My pary­er be with you and your families.

    Yours in His service,

    Niko­la Vukov
    Pastor

    My address is:

    [admin edit — address redacted]

    Reply
    1. Rick Beckman Avatar
      Rick Beckman

      You might want to get in touch with the Spread the Word cam­paign. They may be able to set you up with sev­er­al Bibles for your ministry.

      Reply
    2. Robert V Frazier Avatar
      Robert V Frazier

      There’s a web­site with a full-col­or pho­to­graph of every page of a 1611 KJV Bible: http://sceti.library.upenn.edu/sceti/printedbooksNew/index.cfm?TextID=kjbible&PagePosition=77

      Reply
    3. Mark Avatar
      Mark

      You can down­load as many copies as you want for free online and also phone apps

      Reply
  10. daniel Avatar
    daniel

    I find this interesting.

    Jesus was read­ing from the sep­tu­igent the greek trans­la­tion of the old tes­ta­ment when­ev­er he was read­ing in the temple. 

    When he read from the Scroll of Isa­iah the prophe­cy about him­self it was from an inac­cu­rate trans­la­tion of Isa­iah, when com­pared to the Hebrew texts.

    So were the texts trans­lat­ed incor­rect­ly to Greek by Jews after the pres­ence of God had left Israel author­i­ta­tive like the ear­ly church thought? What scrip­ture do you believe Paul was talk­ing about in Tim­o­thy when he said that all scrip­ture is God breathed?

    If today our trans­la­tions are far bet­ter than the ones in Jesus’ own day why do we take the Jot and Tid­del state­ment so lit­er­al­ly when he being God knew that por­tions of that scroll of Isa­iah were not accu­rate­ly translated?
    I agree that know­ing­ly false trans­la­tions such as “In the begin­ning was the word and the word was with god and the word was a god.” from the Mor­mons are exam­ples of how heresy can creep in through mis­trans­la­tion. How­ev­er if we can look at God and any of the old­er greek texts and have hon­est dis­agree­ments about trans­la­tion, why make a firestorm over minor differences. 

    As Eng­lish is not capa­ble of explain­ing every con­cept in the Greek ful­ly accu­rate­ly, I think the KJV only crowd should take a much more log­i­cal approach. Screw any trans­la­tion. Become a Greek only crowd. Have all texts avail­able for study. Require every Chris­t­ian learn Greek. Then we can just argue over which HAND COPIED man­u­scripts copied at least sev­er­al times since Jesus’ day is accurate.

    Reply
    1. Rick Beckman Avatar
      Rick Beckman

      There are those among the King James Only­ists that believe that each time the Scrip­tures are trans­lat­ed, they become more pure. The Greeks had more pure Scrip­tures than did the Hebrews; the Romans had more pure trans­la­tions than the Greeks; the who­ev­er had more pure trans­la­tions than the Romans; the Eng­lish have more pure trans­la­tions than the who­ev­er… and so on. I have heard it said that the King James Ver­sion is more per­fect and more author­i­ta­tive than the orig­i­nals were on the day they were writ­ten by the prophets them­selves. Crazy, I know.

      Also, the quote you gave of a faulty trans­la­tion was from the Wit­ness­es, not the Mormons.

      Reply
    2. COMALite J Avatar
      COMALite J

      Quoth daniel:

      I agree that know­ing­ly false trans­la­tions such as “In the begin­ning was the word and the word was with god and the word was a god.” from the Mor­mons are exam­ples of how heresy can creep in through mistranslation.

      Allow me to fix that for you:

      I agree that know­ing­ly false trans­la­tions such as “In the begin­ning was the word and the word was with god and the word was a god.” from the Mor­mons Jehovah’s Wit­ness­es are exam­ples of how heresy can creep in through mistranslation.

      The trans­la­tion in ques­tion is the New World Trans­la­tion (NWT) pub­lished by the Watch­tow­er Soci­ety, aka Jehovah’s Witnesses.

      The LDS (“Mor­mons”) use the KJV as their pri­ma­ry Bible ver­sion, but do also use some parts of Joseph Smith’s own “trans­la­tion” (JST-LDS [to avoid con­fu­sion with the com­plete­ly unre­lat­ed Julia Smith Trans­la­tion which is a valid schol­ar­ly trans­la­tion]), which does not con­tain what you quot­ed from John 1:1. The JST-LDS ver­sion of John 1:1 reads: “In the begin­ning was the gospel preached through the Son. And the gospel was the word, and the word was with the Son, and the Son was with God, and the Son was of God.”

      Reply
  11. Tae-gon Chae Avatar
    Tae-gon Chae

    hi

    I don’t write Eng­lish well… because I’m a Kore­an. I’ve been liv­ing in Korea
    how­ev­er I have some­thing that I want to ask you

    I love KJV… And I believe that is per­fect Words of God
    but I know that KJV 1611 and Kjv 1769 are defferent
    99% of Kore­an KJV believ­ers are believe that Kjv 1611 and Kjv 1769 same Perfectly.

    about 4~6 Kore­an people(I also) are believ­ing that only Kjv 1611edition is Pefect, Kjv 1769edition is not.….…

    but I don’t have some­one who teach me about these ques­tions in Korean
    so I want you teach me about that

    thank you

    Reply
    1. Rick Beckman Avatar
      Rick Beckman

      Nei­ther one of them are per­fect — the trans­la­tion was made using infe­ri­or man­u­scripts with bias toward the prac­tice and teach­ings of the Church of Eng­land. The 1611 edi­tion would bare­ly be able to be under­stood by a good deal of peo­ple — it’s spelling is very out­dat­ed; the new­er edi­tions update that, but they don’t remove the trans­la­tion­al bias.

      To believe that the King James Ver­sion is per­fect and that no oth­er trans­la­tion is valid is to call the King James Ver­sion trans­la­tors them­selves liars, and I dare say that they above any oth­er mor­tal are the experts to be trust­ed when it comes to the King James Ver­sion. They among all men would have the most to gain by say­ing that their trans­la­tion was per­fect, yet they did not, and they admit­ted that all trans­la­tions are prof­itable — that even the worst is the Word of God. If they were wrong about the King James Ver­sion, then how can any Only­ist be right about it when they have less infor­ma­tion about the trans­la­tion than the translators?

      Reply
      1. Chad Avatar
        Chad

        I still see you are say­ing that the Trans­la­tors used infe­ri­or texts. Rick, even sec­u­lar and lib­er­al schol­ars read­i­ly admit this is not true. After all 99% of all MSS and frg­ments found to date agree with the over­all read­ings of the KJV. That means the dead sea scroll finds did not effect the read­ings nor does it back up the sup­posed infe­ri­or­i­ty bunk. I can quote you the MSS and lay them all out for you if need be. The fact that you keep mak­ing claims bound in igno­rant oppo­si­tion to fac­tu­al sci­ence and knowl­edge and makes you look fool­ish. I say that in char­i­ty and not to be mean. I mean, if I start­ed telling every­one that Colum­bus was wrong and that the world is indeed flat and all of the infor­ma­tion that proves he was right is wrong do you real­ize how I would look? I would look fool­ish because the facts are there. So if 95% to 99% of MSS backs up the KJV read­ings then how was an infe­ri­or text used? Did you read that book by Adam Nichols I sug­gest­ed? He men­tions this fact and as I said he is not invest­ed in the out­come of the KJVO debate either way. His­tor­i­cal data proves your sup­po­si­tion to be false.

        As far as whether or not KJVO is defen­si­ble based on Sola Scrip­tura I have actu­al­ly seen that posi­tion defend­ed quite well using the Scrip­tures alone, and they did not even use Psalm 12 as one of their pas­sages. They have even gone so far as to lay out the fun­da­men­tal doc­trines of the Scrip­tures in many instances in an ana­lyt­i­cal way and have proven the infe­ri­or­i­ty of the mod­ern ver­sions and the man­u­scripts used to trans­late them based on that fact alone. If a mod­ern ver­sion or a MSS waters down, mud­dies or alters the fun­da­men­tal doc­trines hand­ed down since the time of Christ and backed up by all true the­olo­gians would that not help to prove that the oth­er ver­sions or man­u­scripts alone were inferior?

        If you can get past some of the fanat­i­cal peo­ple who are not intel­li­gent enough to con­vey what they mean then you might find bet­ter sources. I am not cer­tain where you have derived your infor­ma­tion but it has been seri­ous­ly lack­ing in the spir­it of stu­dious­ness and schol­ar­ship. As I said, I derive my infor­ma­tion from as many sources as pos­si­ble, look for bias, com­pare tes­ti­monies, search his­tor­i­cal accounts and so on. I do not take engag­ing in a charge such as the errors of KJV Only­ism light­ly. Were I to make such a charge I would be cer­tain of my sources and infor­ma­tion first.

        Anoth­er seri­ous ques­tion then begs an answer. What do we make of those Greek and Hebrew experts out there who are King James Only. Are they duped and unlearned? They speak and read the orig­i­nal lan­guages and they are well-versed in all aspects of this issue and yet they adhere to the King James Ver­sion and uphold its supe­ri­or­i­ty. When a sec­u­lar school such as Har­vard and Yale can come out with state­ments to the supe­ri­or­i­ty of the texts and the read­ings where does that leave the KJV Only schol­ar and your argu­ment? I am just won­der­ing. As I already stat­ed Scriven­er, who sat on the RSV Com­mit­tee, admit­ted that even what we might view as changes in word­ing were due to print­er’s mis­takes and not a devi­a­tion from the orig­i­nals. Either way there are some seri­ous­ly learned and intel­li­gent KJVO men out there who can not be dis­suad­ed. Does their choice to be KJVO mean they are auto­mat­i­cal­ly to be cast aside as knowl­edge­able and intel­li­gent opt­ing instead to label them fanat­ics? How do we not know that those in oppo­si­tion are not the fanat­ics if such be the case?

        The orig­i­nal 1611 was not biased towards the COE either. It is 90% the exact same trans­la­tion Wycliffe made over a cen­tu­ry and a half before the COE was estab­lished. Wycliffe pub­lished his work on the Scrip­tures cir­ca 1382 and the Angli­can Church was estab­lished in 1534. Amaz­ing­ly, the KJV which you claim is biased towards the Angli­can Estab­lish­ment stood in over­all agree­ment with the read­ings and trans­la­tions that the Swiss and Dutch reform­ers such as Calvin, Beza and Zwingli made. It stood They did not sup­port the Church of Eng­land or its doc­trines if you study his­to­ry. The 1611 also stood in over­all agree­ment with Luther’s Heilige Schrift print­ed in 1534, full 82 years before the 1611. How do you refute these facts by claim­ing the 1611 edi­tion of the KJV sup­ports Angli­can Doctrine?

        The 1611 edi­tion is not hard to be under­stood. When I encoun­tered that argu­ment I myself pur­chased an exact reprint of one of the 1611’s and set about to find if it was true. I found not only was it intel­li­gi­ble but it was also gor­geous. The cap­i­tal indents and wood­cuts appeal to the eye on every page almost. How­ev­er, that fact aside I can sit and read the text of the 1611 quite eas­i­ly. Now if we were to con­sid­er the fact that it was print­ed in the 1600’s and was a form of Eliz­a­bethan High Eng­lish much like Shake­speare­an plays were then claim­ing it would have been hard to under­stand is a mis­state­ment. After all, many peo­ple today do not under­stand Shake­speare but there are a great many deal more whom do. I have seen the KJV used by some groups to teach the illit­er­ate to read and unbi­ased stud­ies by out­side agen­cies have shown that these men were more learned in the end than those who were taught using con­tem­po­rary methodologies.

        You also say that the KJV Trans­la­tors claimed the worst trans­la­tions were the Word of God. That is patent­ly untrue. If such were the case then why would they call for a revi­sion to the Bish­op’s Bible? They said the mean­est trans­la­tion were ver­i­ly the Word of God. In oth­er words those trans­la­tions made by Wycliffe and Tyn­dale along with oth­er such endeav­ors were the Word of God. By mean­est they meant crude in speech and spelling because you have to con­sid­er the fact that his­to­ry attests that the Eng­lish lan­guage did not start to con­geal and solid­i­fy until after the King James Ver­sion was print­ed. Ask any his­to­ri­an or Eng­lish pro­fes­sor at Har­vard or Stan­ford and they will attest to that fact. If you want a “mean” trans­la­tion then try read­ing Wyclif­fe’s ver­sion. It is very dif­fi­cult as some of the spellings and word­ing were so varied.

        Also, the Trans­la­tors would nev­er had claimed their trans­la­tion was per­fect. Would that alone negate the claim of some? I must adjure you to con­sid­er the sim­ple fact that many of the apos­tles and prophets them­selves nev­er claimed their text was per­fect or inspired. Accord­ing to Job 32:8 God inspires men in their under­stand­ing. So the KJVO believ­er asks me, how then can we not make claim to the per­fec­tion of the KJV. 

        Let me lay out their reasoning. 

        1. Christ said we are to live by EVERY WORD of God.

        2. Christ said the Word of God would judge the believ­er in the last days. That Word was the writ­ten Word being used by the Liv­ing Word to make judgment.

        3. If we are to live by every word and be judged by the Word then God is OBLIGATED to pro­vide us with them or else Christ has lied.

        4. The Scrip­tures state that God would pro­vide His Word to all nations and that it would not pass away.

        5. The Scrip­tures say the Word of God is set­tled for­ev­er in heaven.

        6. God exists out­side of all time and is omniscient.

        7. There­fore see­ing these facts exist who are we as men to believe that God could not have known that the KJV would be the suc­ces­sor to the Greek and Hebrew texts as Eng­lish is the major trade lan­guage of our day. After all, Greek was the major trade lan­guage when the New Tes­ta­ment was written.

        Now, I must admit that such log­ic is hard to refute because it deals with God and not man. If one fol­lows their log­ic how are they to refute it? The sim­ple answer would be to com­pare the man­u­scripts and oth­er such his­tor­i­cal data. Yet, they have the weight of sci­en­tif­ic and his­tor­i­cal agree­ment in their cor­ner. So what is one to do then? They do not have to be KJVO, per se, and this is where TR Only believ­ers come in. How­ev­er, when they have more proof that their text is the supe­ri­or one and show where by com­pil­ing the data and the MSS than the cli­ma­tol­o­gists do on glob­al warm­ing then why do some dis­miss their claims sum­mar­i­ly? In any sci­en­tif­ic or his­tor­i­cal field the oppo­si­tion would be laughed off the stage if they attempt­ed to do so.

        Now to the oth­er extreme. I do know peo­ple who claim the KJV is more per­fect than the orig­i­nals. That is fool­ish­ness. How can the prod­uct of the orig­i­nal be more per­fect when deal­ing with some­thing giv­en by God? That would be like say­ing the Holi­est of Holies made for the tem­ple when Israel wan­dered the desert are more per­fect than the orig­i­nal Holi­est of Holies in heav­en. It is impos­si­ble. There are some KJVO who claim that it is fool­ish to study the Greek and the Hebrew. How­ev­er, there is no harm in know­ing the orig­i­nal tongues. The harm lies in being biased and pick­ing or choos­ing read­ings at one’s whim to cre­ate a ver­sion that is not sup­port­ed as well as the KJV is.

        The KJV Only brethren that I have read and are intel­lec­tu­al­ly knowl­edge­able as well as versed in the his­to­ry sur­round­ing the trans­la­tion have not been answered to date. Every­one I see attempt­ing to refute them run to the same argu­ments. How­ev­er, when even many of their own ene­mies and those who are not aligned with their the­ol­o­gy back up their claims and knowl­edge then where does the line get drawn?

        You stat­ed: If they were wrong about the King James Ver­sion, then how can any Only­ist be right about it when they have less infor­ma­tion about the trans­la­tion than the trans­la­tors? I ask where this sup­po­si­tion is drawn. Have you ever read Tor­rey, Gipp, Carter, Grady, Bur­gon, West­cott, Hort or any of those involved in the fray at an ear­li­er point in time to see whether or not the KJVO schol­ars actu­al­ly knew what they were talk­ing about or are you mere­ly repeat­ing a hand­ful of talk­ing points you have picked up along the way. I am at least try­ing to be hon­est by doing the research to see who has the most valid claim of the two men­tal­i­ties. That is called unbi­ased research.

        You start with a blank slate and say, Okay, both of these groups can­not be right because their sup­po­si­tions dis­agree on a point that can only have one con­clu­sion. Then you start research­ing apart from bias and feel­ing. When you reach the out­come then you report on it. That is what research and jour­nal­ism used to be. Now with the advent of the inter­net many false truths have been put forth and research has to be intense­ly scru­ti­nized. That is why I have been in research for this for so long. I am mere­ly say­ing, please be sure your state­ments are fac­tu­al­ly found­ed and not just repeat­ed pro­pa­gan­da that has been sound­ed out by those who are far too lazy to do any research them­selves. I can give you an exam­ple where some KJVO brethren do the same thing so you will not think this is an attack on you.

        Most KJVO brethren will claim that the Sinaiti­cus man­u­script was found in a trash bin at St. Cather­ine’s Monastery. That is not true. Codex Fred­eri­co-Augus­tanus was found in the rub­bish bin there. The Vat­i­canus man­u­script itself was in one of the monks per­son­al cell. See how they have repeat­ed a line with­out know­ing the facts? Now, where the Sinaiti­cus was found is not so impor­tant as its tex­tu­al vari­ants, dis­crep­an­cies and devi­a­tions. How­ev­er with one igno­rant state­ment they have cast doubt on their sin­cere schol­ar­ship. I hope that makes sense. Tis­chen­dor­f’s work, though rather old and obscure, is an excel­lent read on how he found the Sinaiti­cus and Frederico-Augustanus.

        With that I close and ask for more schol­ar­ly research from you when you state things are facts. Please be sure that they are because you are dam­ag­ing your own rep­u­ta­tion and knowl­edge if oth­ers know the truth and facts.

        Reply
        1. Daniel Avatar
          Daniel

          Hel­lo My name is Daniel Self I don’t know much about the man­u­script argu­ments or the man­u­scripts them­selves but I am fond of the KJV and I was just wan­der­ing if I could get your e‑mail chad I would very much enjoy talk­ing with you about all this. 

          sin­cere­ly Daniel

          P.S. My e‑mail is [email protected]

          Reply
        2. Clinton De Abreu Avatar
          Clinton De Abreu

          Chad, per­haps you should look at doing some prop­er research your­self; when the trans­la­tors, Protes­tant Ref­or­ma­tion & the Church of Eng­land (large­ly influ­enced by the Roman Catholics), were brought togeth­er by King James to trans­late what would become the KJV1611, King James set cer­tain rules for the trans­la­tors that cer­tain words & sen­tences had to be changed to suit his own polit­i­cal motives at the time, which was large­ly influ­enced by the Church of Eng­land. Per­haps the fol­low­ing link to a doc­u­men­tary that was brought about by the British Gov­ern­ment will clar­i­fy things for you.
          https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=9CCevwHUIOU

          Reply
  12. Andrea Avatar
    Andrea

    Hel­lo,
    I, too, have been look­ing for the most accurate/perfect trans­la­tion of the Word. I’ve been read­ing numer­ous sites on the the web about the dif­fer­ences between ver­sions of the print­ed Word which is dis­turb­ing. All that I can do is believe what my Lord said in the first part of John 16:13, How­beit when he, the Spir­it of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of him­self; but what­so­ev­er he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.

    Reply
  13. Earl Smith Avatar
    Earl Smith

    I have been a Chris­t­ian for 1 year as of Aug.6 — I have been in intense study of the bible since. — Two points. — 1. I use sev­er­al dif­fer­ent Bibles in my study, they ALL seem to con­tain the basic “Word of God”. One may explain a pas­sage bet­ter than oth­ers, but the Word com­bined with the wit­ness of the Holy Spir­it gives me ALL I need to be a Chris­t­ian. 2. God put Adam in the Gar­den of Eden to take care of it and pre­serve it. When he failed, the Dev­il Smiled! When God gave man the orig­i­nal ” Word” , The Dev­il Smiled again! He knows man! But just as God pre­served enough of the Gar­den to show us what the world could be, he pre­served the Word in all these ver­sions to show us what he is like. God always gets the last laugh. I just Love him!!!

    Reply
  14. Tom Avatar
    Tom

    Rick,

    Let me under­stand this — for the sake of 14 dif­fer­ences, one of which appears to be only a spelling issue [Matthew 14:9 — “the oth­es sake” vs. “the oath’s sake”], I’m sup­posed to toss the KJV in favor of the NIV or NASB, both of which have clear errors and thou­sands of words dropped? Are you say­ing there were only 14 dif­fer­ences in the over 750,000 words?

    Reply
    1. Rick Beckman Avatar
      Rick Beckman

      Tom — I don’t remem­ber if that list of changes was com­pre­hen­sive or sim­ply a list of exam­ples. Either way, it does­n’t matter.

      Regard­ing your oth­er com­ments, I should point out that you seem to have ignored the ques­tions posed in my post above which reveal the point­less­ness of King James Only­ism. The “prob­lems” with mod­ern ver­sions are usu­al­ly only prob­lems if the King James Ver­sion is pre­sup­posed to be perfect.

      For more infor­ma­tion on this sub­ject, I rec­om­mend James White’s book The King James Only Con­tro­ver­sy.

      Reply
      1. Ed Avatar
        Ed

        Thanks for the list and the book ref­er­ence, Rick! I have nev­er under­stood why KJVO peo­ple con­tin­u­al­ly stress the 1611 motif when they only use the 1769 ver­sion. The lat­ter is print­ed with­out the almanac list­ing Sain­t’s Days, and the KJV trans­la­tors pref­ace and their mar­gin­al notes in dif­fer­ent read­ings. Maybe that explains things…?
        It’s amus­ing to see the KJVO brigade ask us for a ‘com­plete, inerrant and 100% his­tor­i­cal­ly true words of God’ and then grow all flus­tered when we ask them about the vari­ants in Ruth 3:15 (to take an exam­ple at ran­dom). This is know as the ‘He’ and the ‘She’ Bible issue, and I would love to learn a coher­ent KJVO answer. The Masoret­ic tra­di­tion sup­ports the read­ing “and he went into the city” [3rd per­son mas­cu­line sin­gu­lar form וַיָּבֹא (vayya­vo], and there is proof some of the first print­ings of the KJV said “and *he* went into the citie”. The prob­lem is that sub­se­quent KJV edi­tions fol­low the Syr­i­ac and Vul­gate OT tra­di­tions and change the text to “and *she* went into the city”. The KJV revis­ers evi­dent­ly chose to fol­low the pre­vail­ing Gene­va Bible tra­di­tion at the point, even though it con­tra­dicts the MT read­ing (and, yes, I know the NASB, ESV and the GNB have this error too).
        My point is that if there are *any* dif­fi­cul­ties with the KJV 1611 or 1769, then the whole argu­ment that the KJVO per­son has a ‘per­fect’ Bible col­laps­es. Their usu­al response to the take refuge in crit­i­cis­ing oth­er trans­la­tions, but hon­esty sure­ly oblig­es them to look first to their own argu­ment. 1 John 3:19–20

        Reply
      2. Chad Avatar
        Chad

        James White’s book is a joke. He has so many lies and half-truths per­me­at­ed through­out that his his­tor­i­cal accu­ra­cy is ques­tioned by schol­ars who are not of the King James only per­sua­sion. White has been refut­ed on many occa­sions by many schol­ar­ly men who are not KJV Only. As a mat­ter of fact, White’s book was one of the first I read on the issue years ago before I start­ed study­ing the issue in depth. I pre­fer all truth to be accu­rate. I have always shot with both bar­rels when I present facts. How­ev­er, when peo­ple like White spread lies it is hard to over­look. His work is less than schol­ar­ly as well. Only some­one who had no knowl­edge of his­tor­i­cal and man­u­script evi­dence would accept his work as an excel­lent resource. He has a ten­den­cy, like Ruck­man, to over-sen­sa­tion­al­ize things and ignore facts. If you want a bet­ter resource why not research Bur­gon’s work? He was not KJVO and was the lead­ing tex­tu­al schol­ar of his time. His work is tru­ly more schol­ar­ly in its approach.

        As for the 1611 motif, where do you see the sup­posed issue? The believ­er uses a 1611 King James even if it is a 1980 edi­tion. The con­tra­dic­tion is in the mind only. Here­in lies your answer. The text of the KJV was laid out. In the con­di­tions they print­ed in orig­i­nal­ly there was only can­dle light to use. Sec­ond­ly, a read­er would read the text and a print­er would lay out the text. If one of the read­ers read “there” then it would be pos­si­ble for one of the two print­ers to place “their” in that spot. Your issue with she and he is a per­fect exam­ple of this. Read any schol­ar­ly account giv­en by men who are not writ­ing from KJVO posi­tions and have no agen­da to rebut the KJVO posi­tion and you will find this fact attest­ed to time and again by sec­u­lar historians.

        Most of your sup­posed vari­ants are just that. We do not get flus­tered at hav­ing to answer the ridicu­lous charge. Print errors are not an issue for inerran­cy. Even to this day if I find an NIV with a print error I do not fault the ver­sion on that. A recent book was print­ed by Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty Press. The name of that book is A Tex­tu­al His­to­ry of the King James Bible and was writ­ten by David Nor­ton. The book costs around $100 but he traces these print errors in var­i­ous edi­tions through­out his­to­ry. Nor­ton was in charge of edit­ing the New Cam­bridge Para­graph Bible. Believe me, Nor­ton is no KJVO Schol­ar, but he does an excel­lent job of rebut­ting these false claims peo­ple keep parroting. 

        How­ev­er, I digress. Even in the day and age of our mod­ern print­ing things can get pret­ty flaky at the print­ing stage. I know of one pas­tor that pre­pared a KJV text for print and dis­tri­b­u­tion. As the press­es began to roll they noticed that for some rea­son the soft­ware was not rec­og­niz­ing the ital­i­cized words and was drop­ping them out of the text com­plete­ly. Now, was that edi­tion not a KJV? Of course to answer in the affir­ma­tive would be asi­nine and igno­rant. Was there a print error? Of course there was. Did that print error cause what was being print­ed to no longer be the Word of God? Of course not. All it meant was that cer­tain por­tions were miss­ing by com­plete error on the behalf of the print process.

        Now, if you want to throw those sup­posed flus­ter­ing issues at me I would be more than hap­py to answer them for you. I have more than a decade’s research into this issue. My own book on the issue will be pub­lished this year. It runs 500 pages and mere­ly scratch­es the sur­face of the issue. White’s book ran 368 pages and was most­ly smoke and mir­rors with very lit­tle real sub­stance. If you want a bet­ter book than White’s check out sec­u­lar his­to­ri­an Adam Nicol­son’s God’s Sec­re­taries: The Mak­ing of the King James Bible. It is his­tor­i­cal­ly accu­rate, sub­stan­tive and has no agen­da for either posi­tion. Your posit­ing of a posi­tion that a per­fect Bible col­laps­es if there are any dif­fi­cul­ties cre­ates a false positive.

        Oh, by the by, if you want to get tech­ni­cal I must point out your error and lack of knowl­edge in the issue. MOST KJVO believ­ers do not use a 1769 edi­tion. Most of them use a 1980 edi­tion of the 1769 edi­tion of the 1611 edi­tion. This was print­ed by Cam­bridge and caught more print errors that had slipped through since the pre­vi­ous print check. If you look at his­tor­i­cal evi­dences you will find that there were peo­ple not autho­rized to print the KJV who did so and smug­gled them into Eng­land to be passed off as print­ed by the autho­rized print­ers who held the roy­al patent. Those print­ings had mul­ti­ple errors. After all, in only one instance the print­ers in charge of the process left out not in the sev­enth com­mand­ment and they were fined 300 pounds. That is the rough equiv­a­lent of 30,000 Pounds, or $50,000 Amer­i­can, in today’s cur­ren­cy. Those who were print­ing the text of the Bible were close­ly mon­i­tored. That did not stop infe­ri­or edi­tions from places oth­er than Eng­land creep­ing in nor did it mean every time some­one set the type in a dark, sin­gle win­dow print shop by can­dle­light and ear could not make a mis­take either. That is why believ­ers would often cry out when they caught such a print error. That is how preser­va­tion of the Bible has always occurred through his­to­ry. Why, that is even how Man­u­script evi­dence occurs even in our own time. How­ev­er, I sup­pose in your mind that will cause an issue. Yet, the truth is, a per­fect Bible does not rest on the sub­se­quent print­ings alone. God has used His peo­ple to catch these issues as they arise and cor­rect it imme­di­ate­ly before the text could be cor­rupt­ed. It is the same rea­son the Masoretes went about with the nota­tions and vow­el point in their own texts. 

        I sug­gest you study all of the issue more in depth before spout­ing off in the future. The Scrip­tures say, “He that answereth a mat­ter before he heareth it, it is fol­ly and shame unto him.” They also say to study to shew thy­self approved unto God. Too few peo­ple actu­al­ly do schol­ar­ly stud­ies any­more. All they do is read a book here or there and think they have the sum of the whole mat­ter and are a mas­ter on the sub­ject. Do you not think we who are KJVO are not schol­ar­ly and have not stud­ied the issue? I know men with man­i­fold more decades and hours of research into this issue than me and they are KJVO. Are they igno­rant of the argu­ments you put forth? No, we are not. Your dis­pu­ta­tions have been answered man­i­fold times over by many a schol­ar. Bur­gon answered them in the 1800’s. The Masoretes answered them in their time. The Vadouis answered it in the 1200’s. Shall I con­tin­ue to sup­ply the his­tor­i­cal evi­dence and weights? Then again, I sup­pose you would not hear them.

        By the way, I was not raised KJV Only. I used the NLT my whole life. When the issue was brought up I began to study it. I got into pre­vi­ous trans­la­tions. I stud­ied Man­u­script evi­dence. I stud­ied trans­la­tion­al deci­sions. I stud­ied the men who were most inti­mate­ly involved with the issue. I stud­ied the doc­trines affect­ed. I stud­ied the vari­ants. I stud­ied the edi­tions. I stud­ied every aspect. I had to face empir­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal data apart from bias. So, when I aban­doned my posi­tion held my whole life for the KJV posi­tion none can say I did not do the research. Nei­ther can any­one claim I do not know the facts or the oppo­si­tion’s points of con­tention. The fact remains, I see too many igno­rant points argued from both sides, but none so heinous as those who oppose the posi­tion of an inerrant Bible. After all, the issue of an inerrant trans­la­tion is not seclud­ed to Amer­i­ca and Britain. There were Ger­man HSO believ­ers in Luther’s time. There were OLO believ­ers in Jerome’s time. On that issue I could go on and on as well. This is no new phe­nom­e­na, but is one that has plagued the church and believ­ers since the first cen­tu­ry. It has just become more mag­ni­fied because we are in the Laodicean age and instead of there only being two dif­fer­ent trans­la­tions to con­tend over there are hundreds.

        If you want me to doc­u­ment White’s lies I will briefly name a few: the real here­sies of West­cott and Hort which I doc­u­ment from their own writ­ings and not some sec­ondary source; the men­tal­i­ty of West­cott and Hort in their hatred of and desire to replace the tra­di­tion­al text as doc­u­ment­ed from their own works, the defama­tion of Eras­mus’ char­ac­ter and doc­tri­nal posi­tions, his­tor­i­cal data con­cern­ing the trans­la­tion process and the tex­tu­al authen­tic­i­ty of the Received Text from his­tor­i­cal accounts.

        I am done. I have to be or else I would write anoth­er book. I am done with the issue here. I will let oth­ers answer if they so choose. If any­one is inter­est­ed in even a small rebut­tal of all these claims then feel free to read my pre­vi­ous posts to see them. Yet, I would close with the bene­dic­tion of the Lord to love your brethren. Even though I dis­agree with you and have evi­dence of your fal­la­cious claims I bear no ill-will. I am just a man who likes to see fair­ness and truth as opposed to half-lies being repeat­ed with­out schol­ar­ly evidences.

        Reply
        1. Rick Beckman Avatar
          Rick Beckman

          Chad… Actu­al­ly, I’m an athe­ist now. The inani­ty of the Bible ver­sions issue is just one of the rea­sons I left Chris­tian­i­ty. Even if the King James Ver­sion is per­fect, its con­tent is so absurd and ridicu­lous that only a fool would believe it hon­est­ly. Yes, I’m admit­ting to being fool­ish at one point when I did believe fer­vent­ly, and no, I’m not real­ly insult­ing Chris­tians — the New Tes­ta­ment says that it is the fools of the world which are cho­sen, not the intel­li­gent or wise.

          Reply
        2. Ed Avatar
          Ed

          I had pret­ty much for­got­ten my post­ed arti­cle here, but a pal men­tioned there had been a response. With­out try­ing to sound impo­lite, Chad seems to have used a great deal of words (going on about print­ing con­di­tions in the 17th cen­tu­ry, etc.) that had no rel­e­vance what­ev­er to the tex­tu­al ques­tion I had posed. In case, how­ev­er, KJVO brigade feel they have ‘tri­umphed’ via obfus­ca­tion, I felt it was nec­es­sary to make my argu­ment very clear.

          Before I do, I would like to make one com­ment on a ten­den­cy in KJVO apolo­get­ics, name­ly using ‘errors’ in ‘mod­ern ver­sions’ as a smoke-screen for mis­takes in the KJV. If KJV is per­fect, then all oth­er Eng­lish trans­la­tions are flawed. Thus it’s redun­dant for a KJVO to jus­ti­fy scrib­al errors in the KJV by men­tion­ing mis­takes in oth­er trans­la­tions. The fact oth­er books are imper­fect does not make your favourite book per­fect (log­i­cal­ly).

          My point in men­tion­ing the Ruth 3:15 issue was to show that there are two options a trans­la­tor can take – either the Hebrew Masoret­ic (‘he’) or the Jew­ish Greek Sep­tu­agint (‘she’).

          και επεθηκεν επ αυτην και εισηλθεν εις την πολιν. [Sep­tu­agint]
          And she gat her into the citie [Bish­ops Bible 1568]
          and she went into the citie. [Gene­va Bible 1587]
          and she went into the city. [KJV 1769]

          It’s safe to say this is anoth­er exam­ple of the KJV ‘trans­la­tors’ uncrit­i­cal­ly adopt­ing the ‘tra­di­tion­al’ read­ing, even though this bad­ly con­tra­dicts the KJVO argu­ment that the KJV Old Tes­ta­ment read­ings are all from the Masoret­ic Bomberg edi­tion of 1525. Mind you, the First West­min­is­ter com­pa­ny (includ­ing Lancelot Andrewes) still did a bet­ter job than the First Oxford bunch (check ‘seraphims’ in Isa­iah 6:2 – ‘seraphim’ is already a Hebrew plur­al). Sad, really.

          Anoth­er exam­ple of the ‘let’s‑just-copy-the-Bishop’s‑Bible’ phe­nom­e­non in the KJV is Acts 12:4. For those just join­ing the show, here’s the sit­u­a­tion. The Greek word ‘πασχα (pascha)’ occurs 29 times in the New Tes­ta­ment, and is trans­lat­ed ‘passover’ 28 of those 29 times in the KJV. The excep­tion is Acts 12:4. Let’s do that table thing again!

          βουλομενος μετα το πασχα αναγαγειν αυτον τω λαω [Greek]
          enten­dyn­ge after ester to bryn­ge him forth to the peo­ple. [Tyn­dale Bible 1534]
          inten­dyng after East­er to bryng hym foorth to the peo­ple. [Bish­ops Bible 1568]
          intend­ing after the Passeouer to bring him foorth to the peo­ple. [Gene­va Bible 1587]
          intend­ing after East­er to bring him forth to the peo­ple. [KJV 1611]

          Notice some­thing going on between the Bish­ops Bible and the KJV?
          Now KJVO expla­na­tions of this range from the odd to the sur­re­al. Have they read Luke 22:1, I wonder?

          Now the feast of unleav­ened bread drew nigh, which is called the Passover. [KJV 1769]

          This makes it rather clear that the eat­ing of the Passover lamb = feast of unleav­ened bread, and that there­fore a Jew­ish per­son could jus­ti­fi­ably name the whole fes­ti­val (sac­ri­fice, eat­ing of the lamb & the days of unleav­ened bread) as the Passover (πασχα). Luke in fact does so (see Acts 12:3).

          KJVO apol­o­gists have brought up myth­i­cal sto­ries of pagan orgias­tic fes­ti­vals tak­ing place in Jerusalem, or an utter­ly non-doc­u­ment­ed Asi­at­ic god­dess called Ostara. Three replies to this:

          1) The Ven­er­a­ble Bede (673−735), in his book ‘De tem­po­rum ratione’, men­tions the Sax­on spring god­dess Eostre’s fes­ti­val occur­ring about the same time as the Chris­t­ian Paschal feast, and how Sax­ons had kept the name going.
          2) Charle­magne (742? — 814), the Frank­ish Emper­or, renamed April ‘Ostar­man­oth’ after the Ger­man­ic form of the month’s name. This is a ref­er­ence to the Teu­ton­ic spring god­dess Ostara (Sax­on: Eostre).
          3) Why, if Ishtar was wor­shipped in Jerusalem by King Herod, is there no archae­o­log­i­cal or doc­u­men­tary evi­dence what­so­ev­er apart from a implau­si­ble read­ing of the KJV?

          In sum­ma­ry, East­er is a sax­on name for the Pashal feast, and was obvi­ous­ly in use at the time of the KJV. Acts 12:4 is not real­ly an error in the KJV, but just lazi­ness on the part of the ‘trans­la­tors’.
          I’ll leave you with a ques­tion from good ol’ Steve Rudd

          “Were the KJV trans­la­tors “liars” for say­ing that “the very mean­est [poor­est] trans­la­tion” is still “the word of God”?”

          On a pure­ly per­son­al note, I was not hap­py at the use of Psalm 14:1. The idea that by mere­ly adopt­ing the title ‘Chris­t­ian’ takes a per­son out of the fool cat­e­go­ry, and into a group that can judge oth­ers is both dan­ger­ous for that per­son and shows a lack of rev­er­ence for Scrip­ture. Remem­ber Jesus’ harsh­est words and judge­ments were for the ‘reli­gious’ of his day (today’s ver­sion would be peo­ple like Jer­ry Fal­well, Rob Bell, Rick War­ren, Nor­man Geisler, etc.). It is in the heart, the inter­nal seat of moti­va­tions, that the gift of true faith in the only Sav­iour, Jesus Christ, real­ly works.

          Reply
          1. Will Kinney Avatar
            Will Kinney

            As for the com­ments about East­er, the King James Bible is right, as always -

            http://brandplucked.webs.com/easterreplenish.htm

            Reply
        3. Jerry Sponaugle Avatar
          Jerry Sponaugle

          The truth is as you said, “that you have only scratched the sur­face” in what I’m sure is a very schol­ar­ly tome after your decade of study. This is not ama­teur hour my friend…Leave the research to the real schol­ars. You are not fit to tie the the­o­log­i­cal shoes of the likes of James White. If you think you are then chal­lenge him to a debate and stop bad mouthing him and hid­ing behind the secu­ri­ty blan­ket of the inter­net. Just a thought.

          Reply
  15. daryll Avatar
    daryll

    Rick, i feel the same way on these issues. I just hap­pened upon your site tonight and found it inter­est­ing. I am a fan of James White and am cur­rent­ly read­ing through his book “the kin g james only con­tro­ver­sy”. I defi­nate­ly rec­om­mend it to every­one. I attend a church that is kjvo but i am not. I use 3 trans­la­tions for study, the kjv, esv and nasb. I also enjoy lis­ten­ing to john macarthur dai­ly at work. I would rather use the lit­tle time i have on earth to learn all i can about the bible and what it means than to waste my time argu­ing with some­one over a trans­la­tion. The kjv is a trans­la­tion. Some peo­ple for­get that. God did­nt write it. Man did. For some­one to say that we cant update the eng­lish 400 years and have an accu­rate ver­sion of what God want­ed us to know is a fool. How­ev­er i do not sup­port all mod­ern trans­la­tions because some are just garbage. I sup­port grow­ing in knowl­edge of God and if i do that through some­thing oth­er than a kjv and and some­one has a prob­lem with that then shame on them. I have Christ in my heart and thats what mat­ters to me.

    Daryll

    Reply
  16. Will Kinney Avatar
    Will Kinney

    Hi all. So now you are a Bible agnos­tic. Con­grat­u­la­tions. You have now joined the major­i­ty of present day Chris­tians who no longer believe that The Bible (any bible in any lan­guage) IS the com­plete, inerrant and 100% his­tor­i­cal­ly true words of God.

    I have seen this list and even more expand­ed lists like it and all they are is noth­ing more than minor print­ing errors that were soon caught and cor­rect­ed. The under­ly­ing Hebrew and Greek texts of the KJB have nev­er changed. This is in sharp con­trast to your Bible Bab­ble Buf­fet ver­sions like the NIV, ESV, NASB (all the new Catholic bibles) that con­tin­u­al­ly change both their Eng­lish texts and the under­ly­ing Greek and Hebrew.

    We KJB believ­ers have a neat lit­tle “dou­ble-check” sys­tem you “No Bible is inerrant” fel­las don’t have. Read all about it here:
    http://brandplucked.webs.com/printingerrors.htm

    Hap­py hunt­ing for that phan­tom bible you guys claim to believe in.

    Will Kin­ney

    Reply
  17. Bob Avatar
    Bob

    Actu­al­ly the bible says in Psalm 14:1, “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are cor­rupt, they have done abom­inable works, there is none that doeth good.”.

    Reply
    1. Rick Beckman Avatar
      Rick Beckman

      Actu­al­ly, the Bible says in the New Tes­ta­ment that it is the fools who are cho­sen… So whether you want to be Old Tes­ta­ment (athe­ists are fools) or New Tes­ta­ment (Chris­tians are fools) is up to you. I’ve met few Chris­tians who have praised being stu­pid, though, despite the high praise it gets in the New Tes­ta­ment (intel­li­gence, how­ev­er, is pret­ty much denounced… no surprise).

      Also, an insult ascribed to a god which i don’t believe in does me no harm. It’s like telling me that San­ta thinks i’m naughty — it isn’t scary.

      Fur­ther, i’m curi­ous what “abom­inable works” i’ve done, and would point out that the “none that doeth good” is just as true of Chris­tians as athe­ists, bib­li­cal­ly speak­ing. (Moral­ly speak­ing, there are far more Chris­tians in prison and divorce courts, wars and witch tri­als than there have ever been atheists.)

      Reply
      1. Timothy Avatar
        Timothy

        Rick: “Actu­al­ly, the Bible says in the New Tes­ta­ment that it is the fools who are cho­sen… So whether you want to be Old Tes­ta­ment (athe­ists are fools) or New Tes­ta­ment (Chris­tians are fools) is up to you. I’ve met few Chris­tians who have praised being stu­pid, though, despite the high praise it gets in the New Tes­ta­ment (intel­li­gence, how­ev­er, is pret­ty much denounced… no surprise).”

        I’m assum­ing you’re refer­ring to I Corinthi­ans 1:17–30.

        17For Christ did not send me to bap­tize, but to preach the gospel—not with wis­dom and elo­quence, lest the cross of Christ be emp­tied of its power.

        18 For the mes­sage of the cross is fool­ish­ness to those who are per­ish­ing, but to us who are being saved it is the pow­er of God. 19 For it is written:

        “I will destroy the wis­dom of the wise;
        the intel­li­gence of the intel­li­gent I will frustrate.”

        20 Where is the wise per­son? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philoso­pher of this age? Has not God made fool­ish the wis­dom of the world? 21 For since in the wis­dom of God the world through its wis­dom did not know him, God was pleased through the fool­ish­ness of what was preached to save those who believe. 22 Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wis­dom, 23 but we preach Christ cru­ci­fied: a stum­bling block to Jews and fool­ish­ness to Gen­tiles, 24 but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the pow­er of God and the wis­dom of God. 25 For the fool­ish­ness of God is wis­er than human wis­dom, and the weak­ness of God is stronger than human strength.

        26 Broth­ers and sis­ters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human stan­dards; not many were influ­en­tial; not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose the fool­ish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28 God chose the low­ly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not —to nul­li­fy the things that are, 29 so that no one may boast before him. 30 It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wis­dom from God—that is, our right­eous­ness, holi­ness and redemp­tion. 31 There­fore, as it is writ­ten: “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.”
        NIV

        For Christ sent me not to bap­tize, but to preach the gospel: not with wis­dom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect.
        18 For the preach­ing of the cross is to them that per­ish fool­ish­ness; but unto us which are saved it is the pow­er of God.
        19 For it is writ­ten, I will destroy the wis­dom of the wise, and will bring to noth­ing the under­stand­ing of the prudent.
        20 Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the dis­put­er of this world? hath not God made fool­ish the wis­dom of this world?
        21 For after that in the wis­dom of God the world by wis­dom knew not God, it pleased God by the fool­ish­ness of preach­ing to save them that believe.
        22 For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom:
        23 But we preach Christ cru­ci­fied, unto the Jews a stum­bling­block, and unto the Greeks foolishness;
        24 But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the pow­er of God, and the wis­dom of God.
        25 Because the fool­ish­ness of God is wis­er than men; and the weak­ness of God is stronger than men.
        26 For ye see your call­ing, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called:
        27 But God hath cho­sen the fool­ish things of the world to con­found the wise; and God hath cho­sen the weak things of the world to con­found the things which are mighty;
        28 And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God cho­sen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are:
        29 That no flesh should glo­ry in his presence.
        30 But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wis­dom, and right­eous­ness, and sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion, and redemption:
        31That, accord­ing as it is writ­ten, He that glo­ri­eth, let him glo­ry in the Lord.
        KJV

        For Christ did not send me to bap­tize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of elo­quent wis­dom, lest the cross of Christ be emp­tied of its power.

        18 For the word of the cross is fol­ly to those who are per­ish­ing, but to us who are being saved it is the pow­er of God. 19 For it is written,

        “I will destroy the wis­dom of the wise,
        and the dis­cern­ment of the dis­cern­ing I will thwart.”

        20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made fool­ish the wis­dom of the world? 21 For since, in the wis­dom of God, the world did not know God through wis­dom, it pleased God through the fol­ly of what we preach to save those who believe. 22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wis­dom, 23 but we preach Christ cru­ci­fied, a stum­bling block to Jews and fol­ly to Gen­tiles, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the pow­er of God and the wis­dom of God. 25 For the fool­ish­ness of God is wis­er than men, and the weak­ness of God is stronger than men.

        26 For con­sid­er your call­ing, broth­ers: not many of you were wise accord­ing to world­ly stan­dards, not many were pow­er­ful, not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose what is fool­ish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to noth­ing things that are, 29 so that no human being might boast in the pres­ence of God. 30 And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wis­dom from God, right­eous­ness and sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion and redemp­tion, 31 so that, as it is writ­ten, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”
        ESV

        (Mul­ti­ple trans­la­tions for your read­ing pleasure)

        Notice it does­n’t call a Chris­t­ian “fool” as you have erro­neous­ly said, nor that God choos­es a “fool”. Your state­ment that the NT paints “(Chris­tians as fools)” mis­in­ter­prets the pas­sage in its context. 

        Chris­tian­i­ty has the appear­ance of “fool­ish­ness”, but remem­ber, “the fool­ish­ness of God is wis­er than men; and the weak­ness of God is stronger than men.”

        It’s not con­tra­dict­ing the OT, as you have made it appear. 

        PS. Too many KJV ONLY rad­i­cals in one place does­n’t help their cause.

        Reply
      2. brad Mayer Avatar
        brad Mayer

        Rick,

        You list changes in the KJV ver­sion which you say change mean­ings. I sug­gest you get an unbi­ased per­son (maybe an unsaved per­son) to read the vers­es from both trans­la­tions and see how many think even the major­i­ty change the mean­ing. Be inter­est­ed in the results. From my per­spec­tive there are maybe 4 that might be changed in mean­ing. Thanks

        Brad

        Reply
  18. Will Kinney Avatar
    Will Kinney

    I have seen this list many times and to me it is just plain obvi­ous that they are noth­ing more than print­ing errors that were soon caught and cor­rect­ed.  But the bible agnos­tics and Bible crit­ics will hang on to this excuse and pre­text for dear life.  It is the ONLY thing they still have going for them in an effort to “prove” that no Bible in any lan­guage is or ever was the com­plete and infal­li­ble words of God.  Not one of these peo­ple has any­thing in the way of a com­plete and 100% true Bible in any lan­guage to give us in the place of the King James Bible, and they know it. They stub­born­ly and pride­ful­ly refuse to sub­mit to God’s final writ­ten author­i­ty and sov­er­eign­ty in his­to­ry in giv­ing us the King James Bible as His Final Author­i­ty of Writ­ten Truth.  I run into these guys on the inter­net all the time. They have run out of argu­ments and exam­ples of alleged “errors” in the Book, so this is their last ditch effort to hang on to their Bib­li­cal agnosticism. 

    See ‘The Print­ing Errors Ploy’
    http://brandplucked.webs.com/printingerrors.htm

    Will Kin­ney

    Reply
    1. Will Kinney Avatar
      Will Kinney

      Bible agnos­tic says: “I have heard this enough in vary­ing places that I want­ed to post this just to help oth­ers not be duped by the state­ment: “The only changes made since the 1611 trans­la­tion of the KJV until now have been changes of spelling or print­ing only.”

      That state­ment is a lie, and peo­ple who love Jesus & the Bible should not make such a claim — even if they do have the best of inten­tions in doing so!”

      Well, what about the Amer­i­can Bible Soci­ety statement?
      Even the Amer­i­can Bible Soci­ety, no friend to the King James Bible, had this to say about the “revi­sions” of the King James Bible. The Amer­i­can Bible Soci­ety wrote, “The Eng­lish Bible, as left by the trans­la­tors (of 1611), has come down to us unal­tered in respect to its text…” They fur­ther stat­ed, “With the excep­tion of typo­graph­i­cal errors and changes required by the progress of orthog­ra­phy in the Eng­lish lan­guage, the text of our present Bibles remains unchanged, and with­out vari­a­tion from the orig­i­nal copy as left by the trans­la­tors” (Com­mit­tee on Ver­sions to the Board of Man­agers, Amer­i­can Bible Soci­ety, 1852).

      Reply
      1. dave b Avatar
        dave b

        Because pre-Inter­net, did peo­ple real­ly have much abil­i­ty to check old KJVs vs mod­ern KJVs? The guys who made the NASB in 1977 were obvi­ous­ly not pour­ing over a bunch of KJVs. Now, with scanned in PDFs of old edi­tions, and so on, we can more eas­i­ly check these things.

        Reply
    2. Will Kinney Avatar
      Will Kinney

      Unde­ni­able Proof the ESV, NIV, NASB, NET etc. are the new “Catholic” bibles

      “Come out of her, my peo­ple, that ye be not par­tak­ers of her sins” Rev­e­la­tion 18:4

      http://brandplucked.webs.com/realcatholicbibles.htm

      Reply
  19. Mike Avatar
    Mike

    I will keep my com­ment plain and sim­ple for all to understand.

    I was saved by my belief in the blood of Jesus, and bap­tised (immersed whol­ly into water) in the name of Jesus. Ever since then, I have read the KJV Bible. 

    Now, in my expe­ri­ence, and research, I have come to be con­vict­ed of these points by the Holy Ghost:

    1. The first translit­er­a­tion of the Holy Bible into Eng­lish is the ONE that allowed for Eng­lish-speak­ing Gen­tiles, like myself, to be saved.

    2. Every man and woman must work hard, to prove their labor, and sac­ri­fice them­selves to Jesus. If this means ask­ing ques­tions about the true Bible for your sal­va­tion, and per­form­ing research, you must. God com­mands us to. It is YOUR eter­ni­ty, after all.

    3. I have com­pared var­i­ous KJV ver­sions with oth­er trans­la­tions. NIV, ESV, ESR, NASB, etc, etc… I only have one thing to say to all of them who advo­cate these “new, updat­ed” trans­la­tions are good: THEY ARE NOT. SHAME ON YOU FOR ADVOCATING THE BLASPHEMES OF JESUS, THAT THEY SAY HE IS SATAN, AND THUS, THEY LIE TO THE MODERN BELIEVER.

    4. I have seen mod­ern “Bibles” use sym­bol­o­gy on their cov­ers, inside their cov­ers, to explain ideas. THIS IS WRONG. I used to be a Sor­ceror, mag­ic user, a dev­il wor­shiper. The pow­er of this sym­bol­o­gy is the POWER OF SATAN TO DESTROY, TO KILL, TO WEAKEN THE NATIONS OF THE EARTH AGAINST SALVATION.

    That is real­ly it. Now, I haven’t read every mod­ern “Bible.” I do not know every­thing. In fact, I know less than most of the peo­ple post­ing on here. There­fore, I beseech you brethren, to lis­ten to me, and lis­ten to me good. I love all of the peo­ple on this earth. I also desire that every­one be saved by the blood of the Lamb.

    NOW LISTEN: Ye can be saved by the preser­va­tion of the core doc­trines of Sal­va­tion by Faith, no mat­ter what ver­sion “Bible” it is. Good News, NIV, NASB, etc.

    - BUT — the only true translit­er­a­tion of the Tex­tus Recep­tus into mod­ern Eng­lish lan­guage, with­out per­ver­sion, is the King James 1611 orig­i­nal version.

    KING JAMES 1611 ORIGINAL VERSION. WITHOUT FURTHER PERVERSION OR FALSE DOCTRINE. 

    I love all of you.

    If you would like to ask me ques­tions, or dialouge with me, Please please do not hes­i­tate to send me an email to my per­son­al address

    [email protected]

    Togeth­er we can pray, ask for Holy Ghost guid­ance, and learn of the Bible togeth­er. again, I love all of ya’ll, and any­one can get saved by a PRESERVATION of the doc­trines of Jesus Christ.

    Amen.

    Reply
    1. dave b Avatar
      dave b

      “1. The first translit­er­a­tion of the Holy Bible into Eng­lish is the ONE that allowed for Eng­lish-speak­ing Gen­tiles, like myself, to be saved.”

      First, the KJV is a trans­la­tion not a transliteration.

      Sec­ond, the KJV is not the first Eng­lish trans­la­tion. The first com­plete Eng­lish trans­la­tion was Matthew’s Bible, a mix­ture of trans­la­tion efforts by Tyn­dale, Rogers, and Coverdale. Then there were also Gene­va Bible, Bish­ops’ Bible, and even the Catholic Douay-Rheims before the KJV.

      “KING JAMES 1611 ORIGINAL VERSION. WITHOUT FURTHER PERVERSION OR FALSE DOCTRINE.”

      If you’re using a 1611 you’re read­ing in very funky spellings and using the Apoc­rypha. But I doubt you are. You’re using an updat­ed 1789 KJV like every­one else who uses a KJV.

      Reply
      1. Mike Avatar
        Mike

        I retract the entire­ty of the pre­vi­ous com­ment, as it is in grave error.

        Reply
    2. Mike Avatar
      Mike

      Sal­va­tion is found with­out the Bible, not with­in it. All Reli­gious texts are fash­ioned weapons of war against for­eign and domes­tic agen­cies. Sal­va­tion is in the Love of Humans to one anoth­er, not in some fake made-up Extra Ter­res­tri­al God and Son imag­ined by war­ring nations and peo­ples. I hope this answer sat­is­fies your quests for Salvation.

      Reply
  20. Brother John Avatar
    Brother John

    Rick,

    I’m sor­ry to hear that you lost your faith because of this Bible Ver­sions issue. Per­haps your faith was misplaced.

    To the rest, I say, this should not be an issue for those who name the name of Christ. If your faith is in a par­tic­u­lar trans­la­tion of God’s Word, your faith is mis­placed. Enoch had no Bible, yet he walked with God. Abra­ham had no Bible but he believed God, and for that God called him right­eous. Do you actu­al­ly think that God would trust mankind to pre­serve His Word? Psalm 199:89–176.

    Jesus said that heav­en and earth would pass away, but His words would nev­er pass away. (Mt 24:35, Mk 13:31, Lk 21:33). Med­i­tate on that for awhile broth­ers and sis­ters. Use what­ev­er trans­la­tion you like. Then go read John 1:1–14 and med­i­tate some more.

    Then take the advice of the Apos­tle Paul to Tim­o­thy and .…
    “…strive not about words…” (kjv)
    “[stop]…quarreling about words…”(most others)

    Now go in peace!

    Reply
    1. Rick Beckman Avatar
      Rick Beckman

      I did­n’t lose my faith because of “Bible ver­sions issues.” I lost my faith because i gained knowl­edge. Sim­ple as that.

      Reply
      1. PeterAV Avatar
        PeterAV

        Rick admits: “[I] didn’t lose my faith because of “Bible ver­sions issues.” I lost my faith because i gained knowl­edge. Sim­ple as that.”
        2Thessalinians 2: 10, 11, 12] And with all deceiv­able­ness of unright­eous­ness in them that per­ish; because they received NOT the LOVE of the TRUTH, that they might be saved.
        And for THIS cause God shall send them STRONG delu­sion, that they should believe a LIE:
        That they might be DAMNED who believe not the TRUTH, but had plea­sure in UNRIGHTEOUSNESS.
        *******
        See that Rick?
        You are part of the falling away mak­ing way for the Anti-christ.
        *******
        But I will “stand fast, and hold the tra­di­tions to the words of Paul’s epis­tles and the oth­er apostles.
        *******
        PeterAV
        Every word of God is pure:
        Rick does­n’t think so=unbiblical foundation

        Reply
  21. Clint Avatar
    Clint

    Frankly, most who com­ment here will not read and can not under­stand what oth­ers say and go at great lengths spew­ing their flawed rea­son­ing. To some, they have placed faith in a book based on what they have been pro­grammed to believe. I can’t under­stand why some would think words “miss­ing” in the NASV proves any­thing. Could it be that they aren’t miss­ing, but instead the KJV (based on Recep­tus) have had words added — thus mak­ing it cor­rupt? It seems like­ly if old­er texts have few­er and the new­er texts more words, that is exact­ly what has hap­pened. Even some who have com­pared Vat­i­canus and Sinaiti­cus to Recep­tus do so from the same per­spec­tive, point­ing out what’s “miss­ing”. You would have to be insane to expect anoth­er ver­sion would match word for word? If He (God) real­ly want­ed us to have His per­fect and inspired book in our hands, first off we would­n’t be using Eng­lish! And, if we did we would wor­ship it and not Him. The 1769 ver­sion has flaws and know what, so does the 1611. Much of the error is that word mean­ing changes over the years. The oth­er thing, often over­looked is trans­la­tors were absolute­ly not Divine­ly inspired, if they were they would not inject their per­son­al pre­sup­posed (pre­con­ceived) ideas into the work. For exam­ple, in Hebrews 9:26 in the KJV we find — For then must he often have suf­fered since the foun­da­tion of the world: but now once in the end of the world has he appeared to put away sin by the sac­ri­fice of him­self. The first “world” means “an order of things; or world”. The sec­ond appear­ance “world” actu­al­ly means “age” as in “the end of the age”… or the con­sum­ma­tion of the ages. Age being a peri­od of time, such as the peri­od of time the old Mosa­ic covenant was in effect. I so have to laugh when I read KJVO dis­ci­ples call­ing the NIV cor­rupt­ed or satan­ic. Watch out! Satan is try­ing to con­trol you and take over your mind! Back to real­i­ty… how many of you have mas­tered the Greek? Or, how many know enough Greek to be dan­ger­ous? I know most repeat what some­one else has told them or they have read on the Inter­net. I love these three for dif­fer­ent rea­sons: the KJV for the lit­er­ary val­ue and faith­ful­ness of the trans­la­tors, the NIV for ease of read­ing and the NASV for accu­ra­cy. So, I use all three and com­pare what I read to sev­er­al ver­sions of Greek text as I learn how. You can point some­one to Christ using any ver­sion, so pick one or all and get to it and stop try­ing to split hairs!

    Reply
  22. Gnostic Avatar
    Gnostic

    Since we’re dis­cussing the “Word of God” has any ‘Chris­tians’ con­sid­ered what was REALLY left out of ‘The Bible’??? Very infor­ma­tive blog @ Rick. Ask your pas­tors about this and see what he says… STUDY, STUDY, STUDY my people. 

    http://reluctant-messenger.com/council-of-laodicea.htm

    [admin edit — copy/pasted mate­r­i­al from the above link has been removed]

    Reply
  23. Tom Avatar
    Tom

    Isa­iah 49:13 God and LORD…
    When the Old Tes­ta­ment was trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish, the trans­la­tors con­tin­ued to sig­ni­fy the holi­ness of God’s name. So, when they got to Yah­weh in the Old Tes­ta­ment, they wrote LORD instead. If you look through the Old Tes­ta­ment you will see lots of LORDs, over 6000. In each case, the orig­i­nal Hebrew says “Yah­weh” but it is trans­lat­ed “LORD.”

    Yah­weh (JHVH): Jehovah
    Jeho­vah: the per­son­al name of God, revealed to Moses on Mount Horeb

    That is a bad exam­ple you used to prove your point. It can be con­fus­ing, but a study and work is what is needed. 

    I think the Bible says some­thing about a run­ner and win­ning a race. I think that if I am to run in a race, I bet­ter study and practice.

    Reply
  24. Edward Avatar
    Edward

    Pilate said it best when he said to the crowd, What is truth? As we can all see here as well, many want to state, give opin­ion, feel out loud, and still the ques­tion is not answered, What is truth? The truth is the truth no mat­ter who states it, and only you read­ing this as well as the com­ments of the above, will come to the con­clu­sion of what truth, tru­ly is. Only you can make that deci­sion based on many facts or many fables. You have to admit that the idea of plac­ing the book of truth amongst books of lies and then ask­ing you to pick the book of truth would then make one think. Is it the book all like, the book that looks good, or the book that no one wants? Jesus him­self said that Broad(wide) is the gate to hell but nar­row is the gate to heav­en, (para­phrased for you para­phrased junkies, look it up your­self). Would you not think that if this is true, so is the truth? The truth does not come easy, unless you get rid of your stinkin pride and ask God which book to pick, read, study, mem­o­rize, fight sin with, and above all serve God with. My Sug­ges­tion is to pray ask God which book to use, not pray to your intel­lect, but God, then you will pick the Bible that is tru­ly Gods Word.

    Reply
    1. Sherrie Avatar
      Sherrie

      Well said Edward!
      You hit the nail on the head when say­ing,” Pray and ask GOD which book to use, not pray to your intellect.”
      I feel that we can eas­i­ly fall into “legal­ism” if we aren’t care­ful, and that’s what stat­ing the KJV as the only True ver­sion kind of sounds like to me. I’ve been study­ing dif­fer­ent ver­sions and com­par­ing them with the orig­i­nal Hebrw and Greek, and to me the new­er ver­sions are just eas­i­er to read and under­stand. The only gospels I see as being false are the book of Mor­mon and the Jeho­vah’s Wit­ness’ bible.

      Reply
      1. Ed Avatar
        Ed

        Real­ly Sher­rie? Sounds like to you? Please read more Bible, not greek and Hebrew, read the Eng­lish KJV 1611. Please pray God shows you what the Bible is say­ing not get the eas­i­er to read, and eas­i­er to under­stand bibles of the trash can.

        Reply
        1. Tony Avatar
          Tony

          Ed’s right Sher­rie. Don’t go to the Greek or Hebrew, THE source of God word Go to a trans­la­tion some­thing impos­si­bly per­fect, rid­dled with lan­guage that will one day be archa­ic… …like… the King James Translation!

          A trans­la­tion a king told the trans­la­tors how to trans­late some of the words… incor­rect­ly. Some pas­sages have NO Greek Tex­tu­al sup­port any­where in the world, because they winged it. Or some­one like Theodore Beza changed Rev 16:5 in one of his TRs because he felt like it. And sad­ly the KJV reflects that change.

          No Sher­rie. Stay away from THE truth in the orig­i­nal lan­guages. Lis­ten to Ed. He knows what he’s talk­ing about

          Reply
  25. Isaac Avatar
    Isaac

    I would become an athe­ist as well if I believed in a god that could not com­mu­ni­cate to me with words I’m capa­ble of under­stand­ing. Job 35:11

    Reply
  26. spinfowars Avatar
    spinfowars

    God allows His Spir­it to work in sin­ful man — when man speaks he does not do so per­fect­ly — God allows even an imper­fect trans­la­tion to do His work as He sees fit — God is able to keep His truth audi­ble even when it is mov­ing through sti­fling bar­ri­ers — if you think sal­va­tion is a choice of the free will of man then you will always fret about the trans­la­tions and the con­se­quences — and you have to explain away romans 9 — if you believe that God is in con­trol then maybe even the worst trans­la­tion can have enough truth to accom­plish God’s pur­pose . it is good to note the dif­fer­ences and point out the con­flicts — only in the cas­es of blas­phe­my would i think of con­demn­ing the entire work as heresy . such as deny­ing the deity of Jesus Christ

    Reply
  27. spinfowars Avatar
    spinfowars

    every­one starts out an athe­ist — or at least we believe in a god of our own under­stand­ing — that is NOT the God of the bible — we have no choice because the nat­ur­al man can­not under­stand the truth of God because it is spir­i­tu­al­ly dis­cerned and it requires an act of God to give life and under­stand­ing by His Spir­it in regen­er­at­ing a per­son­’s dead spir­it — the sto­ry of dead Lazarus being raised to life is a prime exam­ple — once that gift of spir­i­tu­al life is giv­en then dis­cern­ment of truth is pos­si­ble — the Spir­it of God in a per­son is able to test the inter­pre­ta­tions of scrip­tures and the words of men against every­thing that God has taught them pre­vi­ous­ly from scrip­ture — it is a long jour­ney where many trou­bles are like­ly to interfere

    Reply
  28. Jason Avatar
    Jason

    1 Corinthi­ans 12:28 —

    “helpes in gouern­mēts,” vs. “helps, governments”

    At first glance the word “in” in the 1611 appears to apply a dif­fer­ent mean­ing than the 1769 ver­sion that just has a com­ma. How­ev­er, before we come to a con­clu­sion that the mean­ing of the words in this verse are actu­al­ly dif­fer­ent between the 1611 and the 1769, we must first deter­mine what this pas­sage is actu­al­ly talk­ing about first. So let’s ask the ques­tion: What is helps and governments? 

    Well, if you were to read a cou­ple of good Bible com­men­ta­tors on this pas­sage you would find that they would agree with the GWT trans­la­tion that the word “helps” is defined as…. “those who help oth­ers” and that the word “gov­ern­ments” is defined as “those who are man­agers”. In fact, the Ara­ma­ic Bible in Plain Eng­lish trans­lates “helps” as “helpers” and “gov­ern­ments” as “lead­ers.”

    There­fore, now that we have the mean­ing of what this pas­sage is tru­ly talk­ing about we can then deter­mine the core truth of this pas­sage and see if the orig­i­nal 1611 is real­ly all that dif­fer­ent from the 1769. 

    Okay, to com­pare this pas­sage lets look at anoth­er key pas­sage in Scrip­ture that talks about help­ing oth­ers and about being a leader. Now, what did Jesus say was the key in being the first or the great­est? It was being a ser­vant of all (Mark 9:34–35). For he that is chief should be as one who does serve (Luke 22:26). In oth­er words, he that is chief or a leader is one who serves or helps others. 

    So when we read the 1611 orig­i­nal it would say this…

    “help­ing or serv­ing oth­ers IN being a leader”

    And when we read the 1769 ver­sion it would say…

    “help­ing oth­ers, being a leader” 

    Which is stress­ing the same point by the order in which they are placed sep­a­rat­ed by a space and a com­ma. For serv­ing oth­ers pro­ceeds being a true leader.

    So whether you choose to read the 1611 orig­i­nal or the 1769 ver­sion, this pas­sage says the same thing.

    Reply
    1. Tony Avatar
      Tony

      Jason, You went around the city to trav­el 10 feet

      You could saved a whole bunch of time for us and trou­ble for your self by read­ing the NASB. Sim­ple, accu­rate, yet MUCH EASIER to understand.

      But some haf­ta do things the hard way…

      Reply
  29. Jason Avatar
    Jason

    Joshua 3:11 —

    “Arke of the Couenant, euen the Lord” vs. “ark of the covenant of the Lord”

    In the 1611, a com­ma is used after the words “Ark of the Covenant” fol­lowed by the word “even”. Yet the 1769 edi­tion has no com­ma and it sim­ply just uses the word “of” instead. 

    Now, first, we have to real­ize that this is Old Eng­lish, and back then there was no stan­dard­iza­tion of spelling dur­ing this time peri­od. Spelling was based on the writer’s whim and could change with­in the writ­ing of his or her own work. So we can­not impose our spelling or gram­mar struc­ture upon that of the times of 1611.

    Sec­ond, one of the def­i­n­i­tions for the word “of” can be defined in the dic­tio­nary to indi­cate iden­ti­ty as it is used with­in Joshua 3:11 because the word “Lord” is iden­ti­fied with being the pos­ses­sor of the Ark. In fact, here is anoth­er exam­ple of the word “of” to illus­trate this point: 

    ~ Among the many impor­tant politi­cians, the pres­i­dent “of” the unit­ed states is com­ing to town.

    Then if we were to look at one of the def­i­n­i­tions for the word “even” as it is used in the orig­i­nal 1611, it can be defined as to a degree that extends; ful­ly, which can also indi­cate iden­ti­ty, as well. Here is an example: 

    ~ Many impor­tant politi­cians are com­ing to town, “even” the pres­i­dent of the unit­ed states.

    In oth­er words, both these words can be used in a way that gives us added infor­ma­tion about that thing we are talk­ing about and both words can be used to con­vey the same thing. 

    Third­ly, in addi­tion to the Ark of the Covenant going before them, we know from Joshua 3:11 itself and from the con­text of the sur­round­ing pas­sages that the 1611 and 1769 are both talk­ing about the Lord pass­ing before them, too. How so? Well, Joshua 3:11 says…

    “…the ark of the covenant of the Lord OF ALL THE EARTH pas­seth over before you…” 

    Now, in todays mod­ern Eng­lish, to add infor­ma­tion that is not per­ti­nent to the sur­round­ing sen­tences or para­graph is improp­er gram­mar. So then, are the added words “of all the Earth” wrong for being in there? No, most cer­tain­ly not. What this added infor­ma­tion is telling us is not details of the Ark but details about our Lord. This lets us know that it was the Lord who is Lord over all the Earth who pass­es over before you and it was not just the Ark. In oth­er words, if you were to re-read this sen­tence I want you to raise your voice after the word covenant and empha­size the words “The Lord of all the Earth” and then hear what this pas­sage has to say to you then.

    It would then read like this…

    “…the ark of the covenant … of THE LORD OF ALL THE EARTH pas­seth before you…”

    Also, even if this sen­tence did not con­vey the point that it was the Lord who passed over before us, the sur­round­ing pas­sages makes this fact abun­dant­ly clear. 

    For in verse 10 Joshua says, “Here­by ye shall know that the liv­ing God is among you” And in verse 13 it says…

    “And it shall come to pass, as soon as the soles of the feet of the priests that bear the ark of the LORD, the Lord of all the earth, shall rest in the waters of Jordan”

    There­fore, in conclusion:

    We can see that the pas­sage in Joshua 3:11 in both the 1611 and the 1769 is not attempt­ing to con­vey a dif­fer­ent mes­sage here, but they are both say­ing the same thing.

    Reply
  30. makahiya Avatar
    makahiya

    When an indi­vid­ual says “ the Bible ” that indi­vid­ual is speaking
    like a par­rot or a deceiv­er. There are over 400 (Chris­t­ian, Catholic, Cult)
    Greek, Syr­i­an, Latin, Ger­man, Eng­lish, French, Span­ish, etc., Bibles
    which do not match in con­tent, vol­ume or doctrine.
    Addi­tion­al­ly, over 6 bil­lion Bibles have been printed.

    Reply
  31. Jim Avatar
    Jim

    I also like to peek in on this sub­ject from time to time…and it has not pro­gressed on many web­sites, includ­ing this one, over the years. I can’t believe I read most of these posts and the vast major­i­ty still miss the point. Where do so many get the idea that there will be an entry test to Heav­en that asks,“What ver­sion did you read?” From my last 20+ years of even casu­al study, the only test I have ever found is have you sin­cere­ly asked Jesus to be your Sav­ior? Yet He is exact­ly who is miss­ing from most of what is said here. It’s as if Jesus has walked by in the back­ground while some are too busy bick­er­ing over ver­sions to notice! What a shame. Intel­lec­tu­al capac­i­ty will nev­er be a sub­sti­tute for a hum­ble and sin­cere rela­tion­ship and walk with the Savior.

    Reply
    1. Tony Avatar
      Tony

      Jim — you hit the cen­ter of the mid­dle of the bulls­eye!! God doesn’t care what Bible is in your hand on your desk only that Jesus in your heart!!

      Reply
  32. James Gray Avatar
    James Gray

    Most chris­tians are not aware that there is a basic dif­fer­ence in the tex­tu­al base of all mod­ern bibles and the tra­di­tion­al text (KJV). All mod­ern ver­sions are now in lock-step with the Roman Catholic Church’s ver­sion which is the West­cott and Hort text. This was a fab­ri­cat­ed text from the halls of Ori­gin from agnos­tic Egypt! Why any­one with good sense would think some of the para­phras­es of today that use vul­gar and obscene lan­guage (such as the Mes­sage) is of God is beyond my com­pre­hen­sion. I trust that ver­sion which has stood the test of time (even with minor word­ing and spelling corrections)…the KJV. It has been the “Bible” for gen­er­a­tions and the most mem­o­rized of all. Stick with the faith­ful trans­la­tion that is true to the orig­i­nal tra­di­tion­al man­u­scripts (99+%).

    Reply
    1. Tony Avatar
      Tony

      James Gray, on the sub­ject of obscene lan­guage, have you read the sec­ond part of the Acts 9:5 in the KJV late­ly: “…I am Jesus whom thou per­se­cutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.”…hypocrites!!
      Lump­ing all mod­ern trans­la­tions togeth­er makes you a liar.
      ‭‭

      Reply
  33. Bryan Avatar
    Bryan

    God wants us to get along and not judge one anoth­er. The truth is in Christ. Whether the KJV is the only true Bible or not.. Let every­one be per­suad­ed in his own mind. God is love. Sure, bat­tle it out on your belief. Whether the dev­il will get ahead for your lack of under­stand­ing is your fault and in the end God wins. If you think KJV is the truest then you believe that unto God. If some­one thinks the NIV is the truest, they too believe it unto God. The bat­tling is an issue of pride and its real­ly ugly to see..read.. And hear.. And some­day we will all be judged based on our actions and reac­tions.. I think God wants us to keep His com­mand­ments and Love Him. May His Holy Spir­it speak truth. Lets talk and speak our opin­ion.. But what good does that do try­ing to put it on oth­ers who don’t accept it. You can get your point across and they too and hope­ful­ly in time the Spir­it reveals it unto each one of us.

    Reply
    1. Ed Avatar
      Ed

      Bryan take a stand and not the fence please…

      Reply
      1. Tony Avatar
        Tony

        Bryan is talk­ing to you, Ed.

        Reply
  34. Jake Avatar
    Jake

    Any­one who is inter­est­ed in read­ing about many of the var­i­ous cor­rup­tions in EVERY non-KJV Eng­lish text, feel free to fol­low a series of arti­cles I’ve been writ­ing at [removed]

    Rick has proven my belief to be true (found here — [removed]), that the lack of under­stand­ing in our church­es on the ver­sion issue, is blind­ing the lost from salvation.

    [admin edit — bro­ken links removed]

    Reply
  35. Joseph Avatar
    Joseph

    John 1
    1 In the begin­ning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
    2 The same was in the begin­ning with God.
    3 All things were made by him; and with­out him was not any thing made that was made.
    4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
    5 And the light shineth in dark­ness; and the dark­ness com­pre­hend­ed it not.

    Psalms 119
    11 Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee.

    Psalms 138
    2 I will wor­ship toward thy holy tem­ple, and praise thy name for thy lov­ingkind­ness and for thy truth: for thou hast mag­ni­fied thy word above all thy name.

    All vers­es tak­en from the King James Bible.

    When I read these vers­es, and many oth­ers, I see that God’s Word is a most impor­tant thing. Which “bible” you read is not like pick­ing out what clothes you want to wear. It should nev­er be a “Whichev­er is eas­i­er for you” sce­nario. God’s Word IS God. Jesus is the WORD. Jesus, the Word, has been mag­ni­fied above God’s own Name. Whether you believe there are two lines in the Byzan­tine and Alexan­dri­an, or maybe you believe there are three when you add in the Vul­gate, one thing is cer­tain: The Tex­tus Recep­tus, the Vat­i­canus and Sinaiti­cus, and the Latin Vul­gate are all DIFFERENT. God is not the author of con­fu­sion. There are only two log­i­cal con­clu­sions that could be made. Either there is no true Word of God on earth for us today, or ONE (1) of the lines is right, and the oth­ers wrong. Things that are dif­fer­ent are not the same, whether some­one would like to think so or not. There is far too much dif­fer­ence between the TR and West­cott and Hort for them both to be God’s word. Remem­ber, God’s Word is mag­ni­fied above even His Name. I per­son­al­ly will fol­low the one that does not detract from the Blood of Jesus, and does not doubt Mary’s vir­gin­i­ty, and that does not remove whole vers­es of the plan of sal­va­tion, among many, many oth­er changes. I will believe in the WORD that was used by Spur­geon, by Moody, By Bil­ly Sun­day, By Wes­ley, by Luther. You can know alot about some­thing by it’s fruits, and if you real­ly don’t think that the influx of “edu­cat­ed” tex­tu­al crit­i­cism and the mul­ti­tude of so-called Bibles is one of the main rea­sons that the world is so apos­tate and wicked today, you need to get your head out of the sand. Peo­ple will believe what they want to believe, and they can con­vince them­selves of any­thing if they real­ly try hard enough. But to tru­ly believe that Vat. and Sin. are God’s Word left to us, you have to believe that the TR is not, and that the KJV is not, and that Luther’s Ger­man Bible is not, and so on and so forth. You have to real­ly believe that the Revised Ver­sion was the first real Bible in Eng­lish. There is no mid­dle ground. The only way we can come to the con­clu­sion that they are all God’s Word is if we look at the Bible like any oth­er book, or any­thing else in life. It is dif­fer­ent. This is God’s Word we are talk­ing about, not just anoth­er book. Any­way, I have said enough. Yes, I am KJV Only, and proud of it. But to those who are not, please look deep inside your­selves. Deep down, you either have seri­ous doubts about God’s abil­i­ty to pre­serve His Word, or you believe that The KJV is not God’s Word. Please con­sid­er these thoughts, and also for­give me if there are any spelling errors, my key­board is giv­ing out on me.

    Reply
    1. Ed Avatar
      Ed

      “The only changes made since the 1611 trans­la­tion of the KJV until now have been changes of spelling or print­ing only.” I’ve heard this often, usu­al­ly from well-mean­ing peo­ple who wish to defend the King James Version’s pedi­gree as a “per­fect” trans­la­tion of the Bible.

      That state­ment, how­ev­er, is a lie…

      I agree with the response of Joseph how­ev­er he did not reply in regards to para­graph above…

      Reply
  36. spinfowars Avatar
    spinfowars

    if you can get past the first verse of the bible then you should not have a giant prob­lem under­stand­ing that the same God that cre­at­ed and main­tains every­thing in the uni­verse is able ( and has done so ) to keep His word effec­tive and suf­fi­cient for sal­va­tion — no mat­ter what man has attempt­ed to do with it — the promise is — if you seek Him with all your heart you will sure­ly find Him — that means it does not mat­ter how many ver­sions there are — you will find one that will tell you who God is because God is in con­trol of every atom and sub-atom­ic par­ti­cle in His uni­verse — how else could all of his promis­es absolute­ly be trust­wor­thy and cer­tain­ly come to pass ? because of fore­knowl­edge ? romans 9 express­ly shoots that human­is­tic the­o­ry down

    Reply
  37. james whitley Avatar
    james whitley

    I am thank­ful for the KJV 1611. its Gods only book. Instead of men inter­p­ing the Bible . you only need the Holy Spi­tit. God did not write 233 bibles . they all thave changes in them for the worst. we have one not 233. thanks james

    Reply
    1. Michele Avatar
      Michele

      Do you see any­thing “wrong” with the lat­er (1769) ver­sion of the King James? If yes, is there a book that talks about this clearly?

      Reply
  38. Jenni Avatar
    Jenni

    I feel you are all mak­ing a few assump­tions that are incor­rect or shall I say, you may want to con­sid­er; if you read the entire 1611 you will find in the front and the pref­ace that, Monks helped translate.

    Now under­stand­ing that men in those went into the church / or monastery because most of them were 2nd son and had no income.
    They were also from all over world, they spoke dif­fer­ent lan­guages and spelled things accord­ing to their home regions.
    The print­ers print­ed the 1611 AS IT WAS Giv­en to them.

    Next: these were and are not errors, in spelling or mean­ing. I see where most peo­ple claim deuil is mis­spelled, it’s not, it’s Latin.
    Monks were edu­cat­ed because they came from wealthy fam­i­lies but again, they were 2nd sons; they often spoke at least 3 lan­guages and were well traveled.

    Reply
  39. James M Haga Avatar
    James M Haga

    If the 1611 is not the word of God , then we do not have the word of God at all, The 1769 was trans­lat­ed as close as could be to the 1611.
    No one has the orig­i­nal lang. So why argue over them all the new ones have not stood the test of time . The 1611 has been burned at the stake ‚boiled in oil ‚sawed asun­der , ridac­uled by men and it is still alive today, think about 400 years ago we had crime and mur­der all the sins we hear of today, But most peo­ple lived by the 1611 KJV and they made it through life to now , Now with all the ver­sion in print ‚A peo­ple run­ning from one trans­la­tion to find ways to make excus­es for not doing what the KJV 1611 plain­ly tells them to do look at the shape our world is in, and all because we have moved away from what God has told us in his word, It has tak­en 400 years, and the dev­il has not won the war and he nev­er will, because he was defeats at cal­vary . Look at all the preach­ing going on in our coun­try today, and it is not chang­ing , it is still on the road to destruc­tion. If all the chruchs would get back to the word of God and LIVE by it we could come out of the rurt we are in.
    God Bless every one
    The pot­ters Clay
    Jim Haga

    1

    Reply
  40. Pastor Bob Foster Avatar
    Pastor Bob Foster

    Why do you attack the KJ Bible? GOD used it to save more soul and start more church­es than even the orig­i­nal Man­u­scripts. If you were ever saved, it is because some­one preached the King James Bible to you or to the one that led you to Christ.

    Reply
    1. Ken Gomes Avatar
      Ken Gomes

      Because some­one preached to me the Word of God not the King James Bible.

      Romans 10:9–10 (ESV) — 9 because, if you con­fess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes and is jus­ti­fied, and with the mouth one con­fess­es and is saved.

      See, that is the Word of God from the ESV from which peo­ple have been saved.

      Reply
    2. Tony Avatar
      Tony

      Pas­tor Bob Fos­ter — you have an incred­i­bly nar­row view of God’s love and the world.

      Born & raised Catholic. I became “born again” @14.
      Didn’t hear of the KJ trans­la­tion till just before my 40th birthday.

      Was told on that day by per­son such as your­self “the King James trans­la­tion is the only true Eng­lish trans­la­tion. After two days of fail­ing at My dai­ly Devo­tions because I need­ed a mod­ern trans­la­tion to under­stand the archa­ic lan­guage, I put that* trans­la­tion* on the shelf and that’s where it remains.

      Pas­tor: God cares much much more about Jesus in your heart, than the Bible in in your hand. Con­sid­er this reply for a Sun­day ser­mon. On the oth­er hand, If you con­sid­er this an attack that con­firms my introductory.

      Reply
  41. Donald V. Brillo Avatar
    Donald V. Brillo

    God bless you all ! I won­der how inspired were the peo­ple involved in divid­ing the KJV into chap­ters by Langton,13th cen­tu­ry and divid­ing the KJV chap­ters into vers­es by Esti­enne, 16th cent. Accord­ing to one of the facts of the KJV bible : The mid­dle verse is Psalms 118:8 -” It is bet­ter to trust in The LORD than to put con­fi­dence in man.” There are 594 chap­ters before Psalms 118:8 and also 594 chap­ters after Psalms 118:8.
    What is its sig­nif­i­cance or mys­tery, i may say. Can we apply bib­li­cal num­bers here, because 594 + 594= 1188, can we apply the mys­tery of nines here. i mean Math­e­mat­ics- the exact tool of sci­ence, do num­bers lie, NO, unless you inten­tion­al­ly or unin­ten­tion­al­ly erred in com­put­ing the results. Every­body here will agree that it is an inter­na­tion­al lan­guage, Do you know that our GOD is the author of num­bers-numer­als. Gen 1:1 , In the begin­ning God- thats the start of time and in num­bers, first day, 2nd day, 3rd day and so on and so forth. it is divid­ed first into 12 hrs of the night then fol­lowed by day also into twelve hours. You know that an hour is divid­ed into 60 min­utes and every minute divid­ed into 60 sec­onds- the aver­age heart beat of a per­son, thus the Breath of God into our nos­trils, Acts 17:28.
    again 594 and 594 = 1188, lets reduce these fig­ures into ele­mentery one dig­it, thus 5+9+4= 18, 1+8= 9, bothways
    9 + 9 = 18, 1 + 1 + 8 + 8 = “18” what is its rela­tions to our KJV Bible. all through­out, why ? ever heard of cubits? yes ? Do you know the mea­sure­ments of The Ark of the Covenant is a cubit and a half and a cubit and a half plus the length two cubits and a half, Exo. 25: 10. Its equiv­a­lent is 27″ x 27″ x 45″ = 32,805 now if we reduce these num­bers into only one dig­it all will fall into a sin­gle dig­it 9, to prove 2 + 7 = 9, 3+2+8+0+5= 18, 1+8= 9. What is that ? Our God do not change, HE is the same yes­ter­day, today and forever­more. James 1: 17 (KJV) tells us that our God is The Father of LIGHTS , with whom is no vari­able­ness nor shad­ow of turning.
    If our OMNI-sci­ent, OMNI-pow­er­ful, OMni-present GOD will reveal that in The Eng­lish Lan­guage, will you con­tend with HIM ? like what Job did, but GOD dealt with, first, Job then to Jobs hyp­ocrite friends, see Job 38 ‑42. by the way Job is the 18th book of the KJV Old Testament.
    Nine, nine,nine, What is the 9th let­ter of the Eng­lish alpha­bet- “I”, 9th let­ter of the Greek Alpha­bet — iota. Again how do we con­nect that in the KJV Bible .
    By trade our Lord Jesus Christ was, is, The Car­pen­ter, he is well versed in the use of angles, tri­an­gle and squares, 45 degrees, 90 degrees, 180 degrees. Now watch what Lewis Car­ol ( The author of Alice in Won­der­land) dis­cov­ered the fol­low­ing num­bers, i may say constant:
    9 x 12345679 = 111111111
    18 x 12345679 = 222222222
    27 x 12345679= 333333333
    36 x 12345679= 444444444
    45 x 12345679= 555555555
    54 x 12345679= 666666666
    64 x 12345679= 777777777
    72 x 12345679= 888888888
    81 x 12345679= 999999999

    Caru­los Ludi­vi­cos ( Lewis Car­oll) knew these mag­i­cal ( to him) num­bers but he does­n’t know its mean­ing or sig­nif­i­cance. But KJV Bible explains-reveals these to us. What why who when where. Just let these numer­als and let­ters explains these to us.
    let A = 1, B=2, C=3, D=4. E=5 and so on and so forth…
    do you under­stand the mean­ing of the word “CODE”. “DECODE” ? how about decod­ing them ( not the bible code of michael dros­nin- he’s way of decod­ing the kjB is very amus­ing lol and very decep­tive ) CODE = C=3, O=15, D=4, E=5, 3+15+4+5= 27, DECODE lets add DE= 4+5=9, 27+9= 36
    look at our con­stants above, coin­ci­dence, reli­able, is it accu­rate. ( to be continued)

    Reply
    1. COMALite J Avatar
      COMALite J

      Don­ald V. Bril­lo, I know that you post­ed this com­ment over two years ago. One thing jumped out at me in the very first sentences:

      God bless you all ! I won­der how inspired were the peo­ple involved in divid­ing the KJV into chap­ters by Lang­ton, 13ᵗʰ cen­tu­ry[,] and divid­ing the KJV chap­ters into vers­es by Esti­enne, 16ᵗʰ cent. Accord­ing to one of the facts of the KJV bible : The mid­dle verse is Psalms 118:8 — “It is bet­ter to trust in The Lᴏʀᴅ than to put confi­dence in man.” There are 594 chap­ters before Psalms 118:8 and also 594 chap­ters after Psalms 118:8.

      What is its sig­nifi­cance or mys­tery, i may say. Can we apply bib­li­cal num­bers here, because 594 + 594 = 1188, can we apply the mys­tery of nines here. …

      You do know that even the 1611 KJV wasn’t invent­ed until the 17ᵗʰ Cen­tu­ry, right? So how, pray tell, could Lang­ton have divid­ed the KJV and only the KJV into chap­ters in the 13ᵗʰ Cen­tu­ry (1200s, just as the 20ᵗʰ Cen­tu­ry was the 1900s), and Esti­enne divid­ed those KJV chap­ters (and only in the KJV, right?) into vers­es in the 16ᵗʰ Cen­tu­ry (1500s) when the KJV wasn’t even invent­ed in its ear­li­est pub­lished form until 1611, the 17ᵗʰ Century!?

      You do know that oth­er ver­sions of the Bible have chap­ters and vers­es, right? And that the vast major­i­ty of them (there are a few excep­tions) use the same chap­ter and verse num­bers that the KJV does, right? So that the math you gave to attempt to prove the KJV to be the one-and-only true Bible would also work on any of those oth­er ver­sions, right?

      Reply
  42. Bob Westly Avatar
    Bob Westly

    I have browsed many but not all of the blog posts so please for­give me if this issue has already been inter­ject­ed into the conversation:

    What about the Gene­va Bible…the Eng­lish trans­la­tion before the 1611 KJV and the one upon which our coun­try was found­ed? What makes the 1611 KJV (or 1769 ver­sion) more sacred or accu­rate than the ver­sion which our found­ing believ­ing brethren based their faith?

    Also, has any­one raised the issue regard­ing the chal­lenges of mod­ern-day bible trans­la­tors — folks like Wycliffe, who have faced the prob­lem of native soci­eties who don’t have words in their vocab­u­lar­ies for cer­tain con­cepts of the bible…for exam­ple, the Nige­ri­ans do not have a word in their lan­guage for “wis­dom.” Con­se­quent­ly, you can­not have a Niger­ian “KJV” because you can­not include the word “wis­dom” directly. 

    Thanks!
    A broth­er in Christ,
    Bob

    Reply
    1. Bob Westly Avatar
      Bob Westly

      My apology…I mis­tak­en­ly said Niger­ian. It is the Glos­sa lan­guage that does not have a word for “wis­dom.”

      Your broth­er in Him,
      Bob

      Reply
    2. Wayne Avatar
      Wayne

      Why can’t you? You teach him what wis­dom is; then he will not sit in darkness.

      Reply
  43. Ken Gomes Avatar
    Ken Gomes

    Thank you Rick Beck­man for this excel­lent post. I find your argu­ments truth­ful and unde­ni­able to an hon­est seeker. 

    Because one does not stand sole­ly behind the KJV he is often thought to either attack the Word of God or they believe he is deny­ing the KJV as being the word of God. Nei­ther of which is true. The KJV is the Word of God as is the ESV, NKJV, NIV and so on. Nor is the KJV being attacked but the only­ists posi­tion only.

    Thanks again for these excel­lent references!

    Reply
    1. Rick Beckman Avatar
      Rick Beckman

      You’re wel­come, Ken; thanks for stop­ping by!

      Reply
  44. Robert Miller Avatar
    Robert Miller

    I’m not a KJV onlyist

    Reply
  45. Chad Bush Avatar
    Chad Bush

    Wow, Rick, it has been five years since I com­ment­ed on your blog and I just had a con­tact from it. I do sor­row over your move to agnos­ti­cism, and I will pray for you even if you do not believe. Thanks for the chance to speak as men and for engag­ing me as a man even if we were on oppo­site sides of the issue at that time. It is often a heat­ed exchange when speak­ing on issues con­cern­ing faith at any lev­el because it is so per­son­al. One of your com­menters spake of my using obfus­ca­tion to basi­cal­ly over­whelm peo­ple and obscure the issue. The fact is, you assist­ed in whet­ting my sword for engag­ing and mean­ing­ful dia­logue on an issue over which I believed impor­tant to under­stand. Thanks again for being will­ing to allow those with dif­fer­ent posi­tions or philoso­phies than you to speak freely on your blog with­out edit­ing or delet­ing out com­ments; out would be rather easy to fol­low such an urge.

    Reply
  46. Clinton De Abreu Avatar
    Clinton De Abreu

    To clar­i­fy things on the KJV; when the trans­la­tors, Protes­tant Ref­or­ma­tion & the Church of Eng­land (large­ly influ­enced by the Roman Catholics), were brought togeth­er by King James to trans­late what would become the KJV1611, King James set cer­tain rules for the trans­la­tors that cer­tain words & sen­tences had to be changed to suit his own polit­i­cal motives at the time, which was large­ly influ­enced by the Church of Eng­land. Per­haps the fol­low­ing link to a doc­u­men­tary that was brought about by the British Gov­ern­ment will clar­i­fy things for you.
    https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=9CCevwHUIOU

    Reply
  47. Beaker Avatar
    Beaker

    Which trans­la­tion did the apos­tles car­ry around & preach from?

    Which trans­la­tion did the first dis­ci­ples of the ear­ly church use to bash each oth­er over the head with?

    Are we called to con­vince of the truth by going out and obtain­ing the­ol­o­gy degrees and writ­ing long, exhaus­tive essays on the intri­ca­cies of ancient lan­guages and their com­par­a­tive translations?

    Are we even called to con­vince anoth­er soul of the truth?

    No, we are called to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ & his fin­ished work on the cross, bap­tise believ­ers, we are then called to live out our faith by becom­ing more & more like Jesus.

    Con­vic­tion is the work of the Holy Spir­it. All this dis­put­ing does is cause friction.

    Praise Jesus.

    Reply
  48. Steve Dalrymple Avatar
    Steve Dalrymple

    I have a copy of the annu­al meet­ings of the Prim­i­tive Bap­tist Church pub­lished 1970’s. Its doc­tri­nal state­ment claims that the King James Bible is the inspired Word of God. 

    This is so sad! Accord­ing to this view­point there was no inspired Word of God until 1611. Accord­ing to this view nei­ther Moses, nor Paul, nor Jesus, Him­self, had the writ­ten inspired Word of God at his dis­pos­al! This is nonsense!

    Like so many ques­tions that dom­i­nate the fringes of Amer­i­can Chris­tian­i­ty, the ver­sion war is real­ly an Amer­i­can ques­tion. It has lit­tle rel­e­vance beyond our bor­ders (or our time peri­od)! If I speak only Krey­ol or Ara­bic, whether I use the King James Ver­sion is total­ly irrel­e­vant to my life!

    God has used the King James trans­la­tion in mighty ways. But many of us, who are born again believ­ers, have decid­ed that is time to move on. God has used His Word in mighty ways in many ver­sions and trans­la­tions around the world for thou­sands of years!

    As a new believ­er matures in Christ in the USA, even­tu­al­ly he or she has to grap­ple with the prob­lem of tex­tu­al crit­i­cism. [Which Bible ver­sion should I use?] At some point and time, a believ­er will have to trust (exer­cise faith) the process of trans­mis­sion, tex­tu­al crit­i­cism and trans­la­tion, that the Bible ver­sion that he or she uses is faith­ful to orig­i­nal man­u­scripts that don’t exist any­more. [It is evi­dent that even the King James trans­la­tors used a lim­it­ed process of tex­tu­al criticism.]

    With and open mind and inves­ti­gat­ing the issue for myself, I find that the work that hon­est, rev­er­ent schol­ars are doing in tex­tu­al crit­i­cism does not and can­not weak­en the mes­sage or doc­trine of the truth. Being com­mit­ted to God’s Word is not the same as being com­mit­ted to a trans­la­tion of it.

    If the Word of God is alive, pow­er­ful and sharp­er than a sword, why would I want to share it in a way that seems out-dat­ed and irrel­e­vant to our mod­ern life? The actu­al words of the Bible will offend some. The translation/version should not! Koine Greek was the com­mon inter­na­tion­al com­mer­cial lan­guage of the day. The New Tes­ta­ment did not have a strange, anti­quat­ed feel when it was penned!

    The warn­ing in Rev­e­la­tion 22 about adding and sub­tract­ing from John’s prophe­cy was not meant for hon­est, rev­er­ent schol­ars who are try­ing to give us as accu­rate Bible as pos­si­ble. If it were, those who pray “and Thine is the king­dom and the pow­er and the glo­ry for­ev­er” could well deserve the penal­ty of the warn­ing, just as much as those who do not. Some could be accused of delet­ing the text of Scrip­ture, the oth­ers could be accused of adding! If the warn­ing extends to the whole Bible instead of John’s prophe­cy, it is a warn­ing for those who like Thomas Jef­fer­son would delete those parts of the Bible they don’t believe in!

    God sees into the heart and the con­science. If I lean more towards Calvin­ism or Armini­an­ism, God looks in my heart to judge my thoughts and actions. Whether I use the King James Ver­sion, the New King James Ver­sion or the New Inter­na­tion­al Ver­sion, the La Bible Du Semeur or the Ayisien Krey­ol, the Reina-Valera Antigua or the Nue­va Ver­sión Inter­na­cional or the Soci­ety of Bib­li­cal Lit­er­a­ture Greek Ver­sion depends on its avail­abil­i­ty, my abil­i­ty, my need, and my own con­science. God will be the judge of my actions.

    Broth­ers and sis­ters, instead of uncrit­i­cal­ly accus­ing oth­er Chris­tians being tools of the dev­il (based on what you have been told instead of what you have researched your­self with an open mind), ask the Holy Spir­it to help you under­stand oth­ers’ points of view and become one who is “dili­gent to pre­serve the uni­ty of the Spir­it in the gospel of peace.” Accord­ing to John 17 this uni­ty is impor­tant to our wit­ness. Let’s pray for the health and wit­ness of the whole body of Christ, not for vic­to­ry in the ver­sion war.

    Reply
  49. Chris E Avatar
    Chris E

    I bought a Colt mod­el 1911 45 hand gun in 2013. Yes it had been mod­i­fied, yes it is new, and yes it is “NOT” the ORIGINAL 1911, but it is still a Colt 1911 45 Hand Gun. I do not see what the issue is between the 1611 and the 1769. The King James A.V. 1611 Bible I bought in 2013 is still a KJV 1611. Not that hard unless you are an unbeliever.

    Christo­pher

    Reply
    1. Rick Beckman Avatar
      Rick Beckman

      Revi­sions aren’t the orig­i­nal; say­ing they are means you don’t know what the words mean. Your new, mod­i­fied gun is a 2013 repli­ca, not a 1911 gun.

      If you don’t believe me, try to pass it off as a 1911 to any col­lec­tor. Their val­ue is dif­fer­ent because they are different.

      Not that hard unless you have no grasp of reality.

      Reply
    2. Stephen Dalrymple Avatar
      Stephen Dalrymple

      If you believe the 1611 KJV is the inspired Word of God then the King James that you own is not the inspired Word of God because it varies from the 1611 ver­sion (see the above . For the vast major­i­ty of true believ­ers on the plan­et (those who have accept­ed Jesus Christ as Sav­ior) the KJV is not the inspired word of God. It is one of thou­sands of ver­sions of God’s inspired Word of God.

      The fol­low­ing changes from 1611 to today’s cur­rent KJV show that if you are com­mit­ted to the KJV being the only inspired Word of God, only one or the oth­er can be con­sid­ered the inspired Word of God.

      Ezekiel 24:5 – “let him seethe” vs. “let them seethe” [who will seethe?]
      Ezekiel 24:7 – “powred it vpon the ground” vs. “poured it not upon the ground” [was it poured or not poured?]
      Ezekiel 48:8 – “which they shall” vs. “which ye shall” [who shall?]
      1 Corinthi­ans 15:6 – “And that” vs. “After that” [sim­ple con­ju­ga­tion or state­ment of order of events?]
      1 John 5:12 – “the Sonne, hath” vs. “the Son of God hath” [mak­ing the trans­la­tion more accurate]

      Thank God, that He has pre­served His Word, long before the King James Ver­sion of the Bible came into being. Vari­a­tions between ver­sions are a very minor prob­lem. Doc­tri­nal dif­fer­ences from believ­ers spring from inter­pre­ta­tion, not from tex­tu­al variants.

      Reply
  50. Stephen Dalrymple Avatar
    Stephen Dalrymple

    I was­n’t care­ful in edit­ing my last com­ment. The com­ment should read like this:

    If you believe the 1611 KJV is the inspired Word of God then the King James that you own is not the inspired Word of God because it varies from the 1611 ver­sion . For the vast major­i­ty of true believ­ers on the plan­et (those who have accept­ed Jesus Christ as Sav­ior) the KJV is not the inspired word of God. It is one of thou­sands of ver­sions of God’s inspired Word of God.

    The fol­low­ing changes from 1611 to today’s cur­rent KJV show that if you are com­mit­ted to the KJV being the only inspired Word of God, only one or the oth­er can be con­sid­ered the inspired Word of God.

    Ezekiel 24:5 – “let him seethe” vs. “let them seethe” [who will seethe?]
    Ezekiel 24:7 – “powred it vpon the ground” vs. “poured it not upon the ground” [was it poured or not poured?]
    Ezekiel 48:8 – “which they shall” vs. “which ye shall” [who shall?]
    1 Corinthi­ans 15:6 – “And that” vs. “After that” [sim­ple con­ju­ga­tion or state­ment of order of events?]
    1 John 5:12 – “the Sonne, hath” vs. “the Son of God hath” [mak­ing the trans­la­tion more accurate]

    Thank God, that He has pre­served His Word, long before the King James Ver­sion of the Bible came into being. Vari­a­tions between ver­sions are a very minor prob­lem. Doc­tri­nal dif­fer­ences from believ­ers spring from inter­pre­ta­tion, not from tex­tu­al variants.

    Reply
  51. Alan Jones Avatar
    Alan Jones

    Yawn-inspir­ing list of print­ing mistakes.

    Reply
    1. Rick Beckman Avatar
      Rick Beckman

      Exact­ly the sort of thing you would­n’t expect to find in a work hailed as “per­fect” and “God’s Word on Earth.”

      Reply
  52. Paul Rain Avatar
    Paul Rain

    The only changes in the 1769 ver­sion are those required to deal with the decline in the Eng­lish lan­guage in the past century.

    Reply
    1. Rick Beckman Avatar
      Rick Beckman

      Do you approve of the far more numer­ous changes made since then to deal with the chang­ing lan­guage as well? If not, why not?

      And by what stan­dard has Eng­lish declined?

      Reply
      1. Paul Rain Avatar
        Paul Rain

        No. The 1769 ver­sion is per­fect­ly read­able even to mod­ern dera­ci­nat­ed peo­ple, who have suf­fered the degerman­iza­tion of the moth­er tongue.

        Any­one who can’t read and under­stand 1769 KJV Eng­lish can’t read anyway.

        Reply
        1. Rick Beckman Avatar
          Rick Beckman

          So your argu­ment is that Eng­lish changed more dras­ti­cal­ly in the 150 years between 1611 and 1769 than it has in the cou­ple of hun­dred years since 1769?

          Reply
        2. Tony Avatar
          Tony

          Paul Rain astor Bob Fos­ter — you have an incred­i­bly nar­row view of God’s love and the world.

          Born & raised Catholic. I became “born again” @14.
          Didn’t hear of the KJ trans­la­tion till just before my 40th birthday.

          Was told on that day by per­son such as your­self “the King James trans­la­tion is the only true Eng­lish trans­la­tion. After two days of fail­ing at My dai­ly Devo­tions because I need­ed a mod­ern trans­la­tion to under­stand the archa­ic lan­guage, I put that* trans­la­tion* on the shelf and that’s where it remains.

          God cares much much more about Jesus in your heart, than the Bible in in your hand. Just because we don’t share cul­tur­al views (the KJV) doesn’t give the right to insult me or any one else that doesn’t share your view.

          Reply
    2. dave b Avatar
      dave b

      The 1789 was specif­i­cal­ly to revise the New Tes­ta­ment into bet­ter con­for­mance with the Stephanus 1550. Remem­ber, the KJV of 1611 had no clear base text. This issue was resolved by a revi­sion. Today’s KJVs are based on the Stephanus 1550. So is the NKJV.

      Reply
  53. Sam Avatar
    Sam

    There’s no dille­ma if one under­stands what the Bible says about revisions:
    The words of the Lord are pure words, as sil­ver, puri­fied in the fur­nace of the earth, sev­en times. (para­phrased Psalms 12:6)

    Eng­lish is the sev­enth lan­guage the Bible was trans­lat­ed in line: Hebrew to Ara­ma­ic to Greek to Syr­i­ac to Latin to Ger­man to English
    The KJV is the sev­enth Eng­lish trans­la­tion (list found in trans­la­tors’ notes)
    The sev­enth edi­tion of the KJV is the final, and is the best sell­ing book of all time.

    Reply
    1. Rick Beckman Avatar
      Rick Beckman

      Ignor­ing for a sec­ond that Psalm 12:6 refers to a spe­cif­ic promise of God and not to the Bible as a whole, its tense pro­hibits the inter­pre­ta­tion you’re giv­ing it.

      If it took until the King James Ver­sion to be pure and best, then Psalm 12:6 was a lie when written.

      Your rea­son­ing also does­n’t pro­hib­it there being sev­en revi­sions of the King James Ver­sion to make things even pur­er. Or maybe only the sev­enth chap­ter of the sev­enth book of the Bible can be trusted?

      Maybe only every sev­enth word is true and pure?

      Sev­ens all around!

      Reply
    2. Tony Avatar
      Tony

      If the Gene­va Bible wasn’t out­lawed, the 1611 would be a minor foot­note in Eng­lish Bible his­to­ry, the GB tak­ing its place in history.
      *com­pared to Tyn­dall Coverdale, etc

      Reply
  54. D Avatar
    D

    I see errors in your arti­cle. You may want to proof read it. The print­ing press in the 1600s was prob­lem­at­ic in a few ways. Much of it was done by can­dle light and such, but one thing many don’t real­ize is the Gene­va Bible was also print­ed by the same print­er. So, in some cas­es, being the Gene­va was the most pop­u­lar Bible of all time at that point, and some­what mem­o­rized, some words could have acci­den­tal­ly been insert­ed. The print­er also print­ed the Bish­ops Bible as well. This is all on top of sim­ple errors from hand set­ting every sin­gle let­ter, com­ma, peri­od, colon, and semi­colon. Maybe you should try it sometime…lastly these “errors” were known and two of the only liv­ing trans­la­tors left at the time, went through it line by line and cor­rect­ed the errors. Try com­par­ing a KJV in a 1620s print­ing next time.

    Reply
    1. Rick Beckman Avatar
      Rick Beckman

      D, sor­ry for the belat­ed reply. You did­n’t point out any errors in my post. All those tiny errors mat­ter! King James only­ists have ridicu­lous views about the King James Ver­sion, and the exis­tence of even a sin­gle error in any edi­tion of the King James Ver­sion which holds some pedi­gree to the one they claim is per­fect, their “only­ist” beliefs fall apart.

      Reply
  55. Douglas Zachary Avatar
    Douglas Zachary

    Tried to leave a ques­tion but it would not send the question

    KJV 1611 VS. KJV 1769: THE KJV-ONLYIST’S DILEMMA
    I was con­sid­er­ing your arti­cle and had some ques­tions. I would call your atten­tion to your state­ment, “that only spelling & print­ing errors were fixed. But clear­ly, there were changes to the con­tent as well.”
    I will con­cede to KJV Only Sup­port­ers that it may not be appro­pri­ate to con­sid­er typo­graph­i­cal errors and print­ing errors as sig­nif­i­cant changes in con­tent, because of the dif­fi­cul­ties of print­ing dur­ing the ear­ly 1600s; par­tic­u­lar­ly a work as lengthy as the Bible. I could imag­ine that I would have made many errors if I had that task. If there was a print­ing error(s) in a 1611 KJV Bible, I would not con­sid­er those as proof of a vio­la­tion of the idea, that the KJV is a “per­fect trans­la­tion”. The text the Angli­can Schol­ars penned, may not con­tain that error. It was just an error of the print­ing process and does not rep­re­sent the autographs.

    The theme of your arti­cle is to show that there were sig­nif­i­cant errors or changes of con­tent. You made this asser­tion, and you gave some exam­ples, of what you con­sid­er to be sig­nif­i­cant changes in con­tent, between the 1611 and 1769 KJV. I would like to know the cri­te­ria that you used to deter­mine if these exam­ples are indeed, sig­nif­i­cant changes in content.

    As I read your sec­ond arti­cle on this sub­ject, I became aware of the exam­ple in, “Psalm 69:32 – “seeke good” vs. “seek God”, I noticed how the word “good” in the 1611, was changed to “God” in the 1769. Notice, there is just one let­ter in dif­fer­ence between the two. I thought how easy it would be, if the print­er of the 1611 KJV, just made a mis­take, and left out an“o”, when set­ting his type. Lat­er in the 1769 revi­sion, this typo­graph­i­cal error was caught and cor­rect­ed. This sce­nario seems con­sid­er­ably more like­ly, than your asser­tion that this is an exam­ple of a sig­nif­i­cant change in con­tent. I am very skep­ti­cal that your exam­ple in Ps. 69:32 rep­re­sents a legit­i­mate change in con­tent between the two revi­sions (1611 & 1769).
    I strong­ly sus­pect Ps. 69:32, is an exam­ple of a mere print­ing error. (of course this is fal­si­fi­able and I per­ceive it is pos­si­ble I could be in error, but I think the chances are very low)

    As I took anoth­er look at your oth­er exam­ples, I thought in real­i­ty, many, if not most of these, could have been a typo­graph­i­cal errors instead of a major, sig­nif­i­cant changes in the con­tent of the text. In essence, I am not sure your exam­ples are as clear cut as they may seem to be at first glance.

    So this left me won­der­ing and spec­u­lat­ing, what cri­te­ria did you use the defin­i­tive­ly iden­ti­fy your exam­ples as gen­uine changes, instead of typo­graph­i­cal print­ing errors.

    I have come up with some eval­u­a­to­ry cri­te­ria and checked your exam­ples in the first arti­cle, but could come to no defin­i­tive con­clu­sion as to which cat­e­go­ry the exam­ples best fit into.
    I can see if one had access to the auto­graphs of the trans­la­tors of the 1611 KJV, then this could defin­i­tive­ly iden­ti­fy whether your exam­ples are mere typo­graph­i­cal error, or legit­i­mate changes in the text. I do not sus­pect you used this as your cri­te­ria, because of the dif­fi­cul­ty of access tot these doc­u­ments; if they exist at all.
    Please explain how you deter­mined that these exam­ples were legit­i­mate changes in the text, or mere typo­graph­i­cal errors. Per­haps you could write a fol­lowup arti­cle to explain your criteria.
    Be Well and safe ! Many Thanks
    Dou­glas Zachary

    Reply
    1. Rick Beckman Avatar
      Rick Beckman

      Dou­glas, sor­ry for the belat­ed reply. I don’t mean to imply that the 1769 ver­sion had inten­tion­al­ly changed con­tent; rather, the updates to the gram­mar or what­ev­er result in changes to the content.

      And that’s the point. When did the King James Ver­sion become “per­fect,” and why is it still being revised to this day?

      I’ve heard King James only­ists argue that there was­n’t even a per­fect trans­la­tion of the Bible at all until its trans­la­tion into the King James Ver­sion, so a lot is rid­ing on all those lit­tle dif­fer­ences between editions.

      Reply
      1. TheProtester Avatar
        TheProtester

        It was inten­tion­al­ly changed if you study his­to­ry, it becomes plain as day and it is the fire­wall to the real bible. (in english)

        Reply
  56. Wadhamite Avatar
    Wadhamite

    Rick Beck­man, I won­der if you have read Bart Ehrman on scrip­tures, faith, and such. Dr. Ehrman mor­phed over 30 years from a firm evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian to an agnos­tic large­ly through scholas­tic research and his desire to con­firm the truths of his ear­li­er “sim­ple” faith which failed in the halls of acad­e­mia. He has taught me much in his writings.

    To me, a larg­er issue is canon­ic­i­ty. We can­not deny that the Catholic church com­piled the scrip­tures as we have them (and they includ­ed apoc­ryphal ones as well, as did the 1611 KJV). Some books are anony­mous, some fal­si­fy their authors, and there are forged state­ments and gross sci­en­tif­ic irreg­u­lar­i­ties in many of them. Dr. Ehrman has been unable to rea­son away the problems.

    Reply
  57. Huge Berger Avatar
    Huge Berger

    Please read this book on the sub­ject — the most valu­able book you might ever pick up
    https://app.thebookpatch.com/BookStore/authorized-the-real-1611-king-james-bible/3fae9546-016d-481a-997a-ce66a9bcdf15

    Reply
    1. TheProtester Avatar
      TheProtester

      Yes I won­der how many have read this book? Prob­a­bly none.

      Reply
  58. Sam Avatar
    Sam

    *yawn* the KJV’s edi­tions are also sub­ject to the sev­en purifi­ca­tions of Psalms 12. There are accept­ed sev­en edi­tions. Also, all edi­tions are cor­rect for their time. One said purifi­ca­tion is when the Apoc­rypha was removed. There’s no “loom­ing” threat once one actu­al­ly under­stands how it works, the Bible on earth is one of dynam­ic evo­lu­tion that adapts based on inter­nal prophe­cies, not a sta­t­ic Pla­ton­ic object in the heavens.

    Reply
    1. Rick Beckman Avatar
      Rick Beckman

      When I was a King James Only­ist, I too advo­cat­ed for the “puri­fied sev­en times” thing.

      How­ev­er, there are prob­lems with that view.

      First, it does­n’t say that the words them­selves under­go sev­en purifi­ca­tions. The verse says that God’s words are pure, “as sil­ver … puri­fied sev­en times.” I encour­age you to look up what sim­i­les are.

      Sec­ond, the impli­ca­tion here would be that the King James Ver­sion is some­how more pure than pre­vi­ous ver­sions — or per­haps even more pure than the orig­i­nal auto­graphs, depend­ing on how you apply the “sev­en times” thing. This is just non­sense. Verse 7 of Psalm 12 says that God’s words are pre­served from the gen­er­a­tion where­in the Psalm was writ­ten unto all gen­er­a­tions, for­ev­er. How­ev­er, you’re say­ing that the pre­served pure words of God weren’t avail­able until the King James Version?

      Utter non­sense: an affront not only to what the King James Ver­sion itself says, but to all the gen­er­a­tions of believ­ers that pre­ced­ed the King James Bible.

      Reply
      1. TheProtester Avatar
        TheProtester

        So you now think the pope has the best man­u­scripts and are enlight­ened or illu­mi­nat­ed? There is no alternative.

        Reply
  59. Doug Avatar
    Doug

    The KJV is actu­al­ly not a “trans­la­tion” at all, but a revi­sion of the Bish­ops bible. Many Protes­tant Chris­t­ian church­es today embrace the King James Bible exclu­sive­ly as the “only” legit­i­mate Eng­lish lan­guage trans­la­tion, yet it is not even a Protes­tant trans­la­tion! It was print­ed to com­pete with the Protes­tant Gene­va Bible, by author­i­ties who through­out most of his­to­ry were hos­tile to Protes­tants and killed them. In my opin­ion, the Tyn­dale new tes­ta­ment (85 years before KJV) and the Thomas Matthews bible (74 years before the KJV) which were both “trans­lat­ed” exclu­sive­ly from the Hebrew and Greek, are the most reli­able. The Gene­va bible (also not a “trans­la­tion”) and the KJV are both use­able, but nei­ther are actu­al direct trans­la­tion from the Hebrew and Greek.

    Reply
    1. TheProtester Avatar
      TheProtester

      Please site your sources for this incor­rect infor­ma­tion. I am refer­ring to the orig­i­nal 1611 bible if you have read it not not the KJV which is cor­rupt­ed as we see above. They are just a few exam­ples. The 1611 trans­la­tion cul­mi­nat­ed ref­or­ma­tion bibles such as the bish­ops. Have you com­pared each one to the 1611 or stud­ied its his­to­ry? Mak­ing that state­ment dis­cred­its his­to­ry. Are you say­ing his­to­ry is a lie

      Reply

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Rick Beckman